Chapter 41: The First Battle of the Round-robin Tournament, Hainan (10)
As soon as the gentry came to Hainan to play, it was already in its third year.
As a descendant of Akaji and Liangchuan, Mu has witnessed the rise, peak, and current decline of Hainan.
Newu Gu and God are very good, and Kiyota is also a rookie worth looking forward to, but none of these juniors can stand up to help him hold up the scene at a critical moment.
The shepherd understood that they were no wonder of it.
If it weren't for the four giants in the county, if they were to change to another team, they would be the core and trump card, but in the Hainan team, no one could become another core other than Mu himself.
Netakeya is not tall enough, the god physique is weak, and Kiyota is too tender.
And Takasago, who is also in the third grade, lacks qualifications and experience.
The seniors are too strong, and while leaving countless honors, it also makes the juniors lack experience.
This year, it is Mu's turn as the only core of Hainan, he only has to break out by himself, break out again, and urge all his strength to lead his teammates forward.
But now, Mu obviously feels that he is a little powerless.
This is not the first time Mu has felt this way, there were some clues in the Winter Cup last year, but at that time, one game against Xiangyang, the other party was too strong, the whole team was completely suppressed, and the other game was against Lingnan, they were not mature enough, Mu himself was in full state again, and he won the hard work, but the scene was not as difficult as today.
It wasn't until he met Xiangbei that Mu was surprised to realize that Hainan had actually fallen rapidly from its peak.
The departure of Liangchuan, Daimon and Akaji is really too great a loss for Hainan! Even with Hainan's heritage, it can't fill the vacancy they left behind for a while.
On the other hand, looking at Xiangbei, Mu had palpitations for a while, and he found that the lineup that was inseparable from Hainan in the second half was actually no longer their main force.
Xiangbei only left Maori in the starter, and the second half is about to end, Suzuki has not yet thought of replacing Rukawa Sakuragi, who has been resting for a long time.
Because it's no longer needed.
After scoring 11 points in a row on 4-of-4 shooting, Miyashi finally missed a shot, and after losing Netakeya, the inside line composed of Takasago and God also fell back into the bottom in terms of rebounding, and the rebound was grabbed by Hotta.
Hotta passed Mizuno, ran forward by himself, received a pass from Mizuno, wiped it to the basket, and faced Gong Yi, who was 30 centimeters behind him, and made a layup in three steps to win his first ball.
Speed wasn't Hotta's strong point, but in this round, the god who should be guarding against him didn't appear where he should be.
In order to save his physical strength, Mu chose to pounce on Mizuno, but he didn't succeed, but was passed by Mizuno in a position.
Kosuga had a chance to make up for the defense, but he hit Shakura headfirst and failed to squeeze through, but bounced back two steps.
Gao Tou shouted a timeout, and he saw that God's physical strength had reached its limit.
After asking Ichiro Shinso's personal feelings, Takaotou used the rookie center Imada, let Takasago play back to the best power forward position, and try to open the gap from Hotta, the weakest in the Xiangbei formation.
It's just that when the Hainan players returned to the field, not only Imada, who made his debut, but even Takasago, who had been in battle for a long time, lost confidence in the effect of Gao Tou's change of formation.
Suzuki's reaction was very quick, and after sensing that God might not appear again, he immediately replaced Mori with captain Akagi. Even if there is no Hotta, just Akagi is enough, it is enough to compete with Imada and Takasago!
The unwilling Hainan team launched a Jedi counterattack under the leadership of Mu, but the difference between the two teams has expanded from 6 points when the god ended to 12 points step by step!
Kosuge and Takasago were successively capped by Akagi and failed to harvest in the final stages of the race.
After Gong Yi missed a goal, his confidence was not hit, he gritted his teeth, and under the blocking of Wu Dai, he shot continuously and scored another 5 points, but it was useless.
Xiangbei didn't fight back with three-point shots, but through Akagi's scoring, rebounding and point-sharing assists, he really played every round, and sent the team's score to three digits with 2 points and 2 points.
In the end, the referee blew the whistle at the end of the game, and the scores of the two teams were fixed at 109-99, and Xiangbei won by a full 10 points.
This year's round-robin tournament in Kanagawa Prefecture has added a lot of fresh rules, such as the official selection of the best player in a single game.
However, the single-game MVP of this first game was a bit difficult to deliver.
After the game, after some discussion, the referee team finally awarded the title of the best player to Xiangbei captain Akagi, in order to highlight his unstoppable performance on the inside in this game.
However, in the statistics, although Akagi's 22 points, 7 hats, 7 rebounds and 5 assists are eye-catching, they are not outstanding compared to the losing side.
In this campaign, the three Hainan team scored more than 20 points, namely Mu with 22 points, Qingtian with 26 points and God with 21 points.
And all three of them have more assists than Akagi. Maki had 17 assists, Kiyota had eight, and God had six.
The Hainan team's scores were concentrated on the outside, and Xiao Kan and Gong Yi also scored double-doubles in their little playing time, scoring 10 and 16 points respectively.
In contrast, Xiangbei's scoring points are much more scattered.
Mori scored 16 points at the power forward position, and Rukawa, a small forward who favors inside scoring, also scored 16 points. In the second half, Sakura scored a total of 13 points on 3-of-4 three-pointers, Sakuragi also scored 13, and Wu Dai's efficiency was a little low, scoring only 12 points on 9 shots.
The two point guards who played half a half on the Xiangbei side, Sakuragi and Mizuno, scored 9 and 10 assists respectively.
This kind of performance makes Suzuki more and more headaches about how to use the two of them, and he can't always play half a half.
However, the two-point guard lineup will squeeze the playing time of several shooting guards. Wu Dai's poor performance in today's game, although there are some reasons of his own, but it is not unrelated to the fact that he rarely played in the previous warm-up games and did not maintain good form.
For Suzuki, the one-week gap between the first and second rounds of the round-robin was the hardest time to endure. Studying the opponent, thinking about tactics, designing targets, and arranging lineups, each of which has to kill countless brain cells.
However, for the other players of the Xiangbei team, this gap is a rare adjustment period. The training volume just needs to be maintained, and the intra-team competition does not need to be too intense to prevent injury.
What's more, the next game is against Xiangyang. This is the first match between two teams to win the first game, as if they had already secured their tickets to the national tournament.
Although the third place in Kanagawa still has a play-off game, since winning these 0.5 places, no team has ever crossed this hurdle.
There is no pressure on either side.