Chapter 12: A Trip to Tokyo (10)
Shortly after Suzuki and Akagi finished talking, the match between Xiangbei and Izumijinkan also came to an end. Although Sakuragi didn't exert much strength, with him on the court, Xiangbei not only stabilized his position, but also expanded the difference to 20 points.
Suzuki was a little embarrassed when he said goodbye, and he didn't pay attention to it, and he beat Zhengbang a little embarrassed, but Coach Furushima didn't care, but thanked Suzuki and thanked Xiangbei for letting some Zhengbang generals who sat in the well and watched the sky, and felt the gap.
Coming back from Tokyo, everything was business as usual.
Akagi, who got out of the knot, showed a better competitive state than before in training, which reassured Mu Du, Wu Dai and others who were a little worried about him, and also made Suzuki determined to put Sakuragi on the outside in the main tactics.
During this week, the competition schedule was arranged and sent to Xiangbei.
As last year's semi-finals, even though it didn't appear, Xiangbei still enjoyed the treatment of a seeded team, and only needed to play the last round of games in the knockout stage.
There are many traditional strong teams in the fourth division, and Sunhita, Minowa and Buri are all relatively strong teams, and no matter who plays in front of Xiangbei, it will not be surprising.
The advantage of being a seeded team is that they only have to play against one challenger, and before that, there is plenty of time to observe possible opponents.
However, Suzuki is also a little uneasy in his heart, he will face a good team in the first game, and it is unknown how much form he can play, and whether the opponent is a tired division that has been thoroughly explored, or a strong opponent who has played in form and morale has climbed to a high point, is also an uncertain factor.
Two years ago, Suzuki led the immature Akagi, Mizuno and others, with their outstanding tactics and determination to pull the emperor off the horse, defeated Lingnan in one fell swoop, entered the prefectural semifinals, and finally entered the national competition with the second place in Kanagawa Prefecture.
This is his pride, and it is also his death hole, and Suzuki doesn't want to be treated like this anyway, so after the schedule comes out, he tells Mizuno to start contacting various colleges and universities again, looking for a weighty warm-up opponent.
In the middle of the week, Xiangbei played a training match with Oda Kiri, and both sides were acquaintances, but there was no need to keep their hands.
For the first time in this match, Suzuki fielded his carefully arranged main lineup.
Center Akagi, Mori Omachi, Rukawa Komae, point guard Sakuragi, and point guard Takeyo.
Oda Kiri's running and bombing style of play was originally not afraid of a team with tall people. However, in Xiangbei's current lineup, Maori, Rukawa and Sakuragi are all first-class in terms of athleticism, although Akagi is slower, but it is also fast in the center, and the four plus Wu Dai on the outside, in the back and forth running, the formation is not chaotic at all. Even if there were one or two times when they were pulled out of the gap, they were made up by Sakuragi and Rukawa by relying on their personal abilities.
Oda Che persisted in the half, failed to drag Xiangbei down, but consumed himself not lightly, and the score failed to bite, losing by 14 points.
In the second half, Suzuki deployed troops, keeping Akagi and Sakuragi, supplemented by the lineup of Hotta, Twilight and Shakura.
This is the second change of Suzuki's tactics. The position of the outside trio is very active, not only can they drag the outside to shoot three points on the premise of Akagi to ensure rebounding, but also can take turns to enter the basket to play pass and cut cooperation.
This tactic is less offensive resistance for Oda Kiri, but the defense is still beaten into a sieve. Their defense is already very average, but after playing more with Xiangbei, they can also feel that in the face of this second set of tactics, even if their overall defense goes up two levels, it will only be the same result.
In the final minutes of the game, Suzuki adjusted the formation again, with Sakura and Hotta coming off the court and Mizuno and Takasu on to play a double point guard lineup.
Under this lineup, Akagi, who played defense and cover for most of the game, was full of firepower, hooking dunks one after another, and scored 20 points in just 5 minutes.
Although Oda Kiri does not have a formal center, Akagi's performance is still remarkable, especially when he turns around and dunks with both hands under the three-man package, which fully reflects his current physical and technical combination is very good.
Xiao Tianche lost badly, but no one was hit, so they were saddened, but they were very grateful to Xiangbei for being able to fight them with all their might, which was a rare experience for them.
At the end of the week, Shobei headed for Tokyo again. This time, Suzuki brought a lot of people less. In the team, there are elderly people in the Mizuno siblings' family who have passed away and cannot go; Mori, however, was the father of a seafarer who returned to Kanagawa and needed to spend time with his family. And there are some people in the basketball club who have been to Tokyo once, and are embarrassed to spend another weekend of eating and drinking for nothing - of course, Takamiya and Noma, who are thick-skinned enough, still move when they hear the wind and will not fall.
There were no games scheduled for this week, and the two games were scheduled for one on the afternoon of Toyo and one on the morning of Sunday, which was equivalent to back-to-back matches, which was also a preview of Suzuki's schedule for the national championships.
The first thing Xiangbei has to face is the Quanzhenguan School Park.
The three universities of Hidetoku, Izumijinkan and Jeongbong, known as the three kings in Tokyo, have achieved very good results in history, and have almost won the qualifying places in all previous national competitions.
Hidetoku is already the strongest team in Tokyo, and is currently representing Tokyo in the Kanto Tournament, and it is reported that he has already met Shoyang in the final.
In the Xiude team that Xiangbei encountered back then, the pair of guards, Midorima and Takao, is now in the third grade, and it must be more difficult than back then. Suzuki believes that even if Xiude's strength does not reach the level of Xiangyang, I am afraid that it is between Lingnan and Hainan.
Izumi Shinkan is as famous as Hidetoku and Zhengbang, but after seeing that Zhengbang is not worthy of the name, Suzuki can't guess their true strength, and for the sake of prudence, he sent most of the main lineup to the field.
Maori and Mizuno did not come, the center Akagi and the point guard Sakuragi were naturally the main starters, and Suzuki took the assistance of Takasu, Shakura and Wu Dai, ready to base themselves on defense first, find out the details of the opponent and then attack.
What Suzuki didn't expect was that Zhengbang could finally get one or two ace-level players, but when he came to Quanzhenkan, there were no top-notch players!
Xiangbei's tentative lineup actually collapsed the Quanzhen Pavilion directly after the opening!
0-17。
This is the score of 6 minutes after the opening, and it was not until 6 and a half minutes that the players on the field in Xiangbei were all happy to score too many points, and only under Suzuki's hint did they remember that this was just a friendly game, and they should save some face and put some water, which allowed the small forward Nagasawa of Izumi Zhenkan to score the first 2 points.
Suzuki realized that this game was no longer meaningful to Xiangbei, so he simply trained the substitute players, increased the depth of the bench, first replaced Akagi and Sakuragi, and then gradually replaced Shakura and Wudai.
Takasu played the center, and the supernumerary Danu who came with the team played the power forward, Yamada Tadashi small forward, Mito point guard, and Yasuda point guard.
Rao is like this, and Izumi Zhenkan failed to equalize the score in the end.
After a comfortable victory, Xiangbei faced the last opponent of the Tokyo tour, Seirin.