Columbia University's Thunderbirds basketball arena is located north of campus, and tonight will be the first game of the new season for the Columbia Lions, who still have a lot of supporters despite the lack of strength among the teams at Columbia.

On the way to the basketball hall, several young people walked together.

"Randy, are you sure your roommate will start tonight's game? Do I remember him as a substitute for the Lions? ”

"Don't worry, Mike, I went to see them train the other day, and Bruce has been promoted to the main force."

"Well, hopefully he doesn't disappoint too much tonight, we finally had time to play together today, but we played two less games to see him play."

This is Li Chenglong's roommate Randy Wilson with a few good friends in the baseball club to cheer him on, although Wilson said that he did not support Li Chenglong to play, now that the game is coming, he still brings people to support Li Chenglong.

With two games of baseball played in the afternoon, when Randy Wilson and the others entered the arena, the two teams had already warmed up and the game was about to begin.

The Lions' first game against the MIT Beavers is MIT, which is also a world-renowned university in the eastern United States, but it is not part of the Ivy League. Although the level of basketball at Columbia is not high, the Ivy League in which Columbia is located is at least the NCAA Division I league, while the league in which MIT is located is only the NCAA Division III league, the lowest level.

This is also the opponent that head coach Joe Jones intends to choose, pick a weak one to practice first, anyway, non-league games are the dish of those strong leagues, and it doesn't matter to the Ivy League.

Before the start of the game, there were still many supporters at the scene, and Li Chenglong also started the game without surprise.

Seeing an apparently Asian standing in the arena about to start, there was some buzz in the arena.

"Who's that kid? Why haven't you seen it before? ”

"Is he a freshman this year? As soon as he entered the school team, he became the main force, so he should have a good strength, right? ”

There will be no shortage of Asians in elite schools in the United States, and many of them will join various school teams, but most of the Asians are joining some technical project varsity teams, and Asian Americans can often be seen on the tennis team and baseball team in popular sports.

This is also the fact that Li Chenglong's presence in the Lions was too low in the past, and only people who cared about the Lions knew about his existence.

Standing on the court, Li Chenglong didn't have much impression of MIT basketball, the only thing he remembered was that Morey, the manager of the Houston Rockets, graduated from MIT Business School, and Morey's work on the Rockets made people love and hate, especially Chinese Rocket fans always scolded Morey for not getting good players, which made the Yao Mai combination do nothing in the playoffs year after year.

Morey is particularly obsessed with data, and his player selection data always comes first, but I have to say that it really allowed him to pick out a lot of good things from scrap, such as Scola, Lowry, Brooks, Parsons, Beverley, all of which were selected by Morey with a low draft pick or obtained at a low price, and most of them became star players.

Both teams stood on the court to prepare, with the Lions starting point guard Harry Scott, scoring guard Lee Chenglong, small forward Smith O'Connor, power forward Martin Taylor, center Fernando Lopez, and the MIT Beavers side with some players who were unimpressed by Victory.

The two teams jumped the ball, Fernando Lopez, the center of the Columbia Lions, is a very heavy Spanish meat shield center, in fact, Li Chenglong does not know very well whether he is Spanish or Hispanic, only knows that he can speak Spanish, and it is also an obvious Spanish name from the name.

The Spanish meat shield also lost the jump ball unsurprisingly, and the Beavers attacked first.

The Beavers hoisted the ball inside to get close to the basket for a steady shot, but their nameless lanky midfielder shot wide under the interference of the Spanish meat shield, and Martin Taylor took the rebound and the ball shifted to the Lions' side.

This is the first game of the new NCAA season, Lions point guard Harry Scott advanced with the ball, and the scene immediately rang out with cheers and cheers, which made Li Chenglong, who started for the first time, a little nervous.

However, the Lions' first shot had nothing to do with him, he didn't touch the ball at all, Scott broke through the ball, and Taylor hit a high jumper.

It took four rounds for the two teams to switch between offense and defense before Lee Chenglong got his first shot.

Martin Taylor played inside to attract the defense and then split the ball, Smith O'Connor got the ball outside, O'Connor had no three-point ability but had a ball quotient, and made a shooting action, the guy in front of Li Chenglong immediately let go of him to make up for the defense, O'Connor then transferred the ball to Li Chenglong, and Li Chenglong received the ball without hesitation to shoot when he was unguarded.

Swish!

Three-point hit.

Cheers rang out in the arena, and Lee Chenglong's three-pointer gave the Lions a 7-2 lead.

Compared with the Lions, the MIT Beavers are completely a weak chicken team, and the Lions have no mercy in their abuse.

There was no reason for both sides to win this game, and the game played smoothly, and soon the first half was over, and the Lions led the opponent by 11 points at 42-31 and returned to the locker room, Li Chenglong scored 7 points on 3-of-5 shooting and 1-of-2 three-pointers.

This is Li Chenglong's first official starting game, he is still a complete rookie in the team, and it is normal that he has no right to shoot.

The rules of NCAA basketball are different from the rules of NBA or FIBA (FIBA), NCAA basketball games are divided into two halves, each half is 20 minutes without an interval in between, unlike NBA or FIBA to be divided into four quarters, and NCAA has a 35-second offensive time each time, unlike NBA or FIBA's 24 seconds, and NCAA does not defend for 3 seconds, and will not stop after scoring (NBA will pause time after each ball scored, NCAA will not), All of this makes the NCAA offensive and defensive pace slower, so the NCAA games often score 60 or 70 points per team, and few teams score more than 100 points.

Of course, this is all in the NCAA Division I league, the lower league games, such as the Division III league, and the single score has appeared more than once, but everyone knows that it is brushed out when the defense is very weak and weak, and no one will take it seriously.

The Lions had a good atmosphere in the locker room, and everyone was in good spirits to get off to a good start to the new season.

Head coach Jones stepped up and said: "It's not a difficult game for us, and if everything goes well in the second half, I'll put some of the time on the bench. ”

Just five minutes into the second half, the Lions stretched the score to 15 points, which is a big margin in a slow-paced game like the NCAA, so Jones began to substitute players.

When the main players were replaced one by one, the substitute players got the opportunity to play, but Andre Jackson on the bench was a little strange, he was still waiting to show off the field, but the Chinese kid has been left on the court, and now it is basically that kid alone with a few substitutes to play.

Li Chenglong played with a few substitutes, and soon he became the offensive core of the court, with three shots on the outside, breaking through layups with the ball, and occasionally showing off a pull-up jump shot, Li Chenglong looked like a star on the court.

Although the Lions changed the bench, the Beavers did not make substitutions, they still played with the main force, which made the score gap be worn out a little bit, and the point guard of the Beavers shot a three-pointer with 9 minutes left in the second half, and the score became 50-58, narrowing the gap to less than 10 points.

Joe Jones immediately called a timeout, he was thinking about whether to change the main force to play for two minutes, Li Chenglong obviously saw the intention of the head coach, and took the initiative to ask: "Coach, give us another 5 minutes, I have the confidence to open the score." ”

Jones didn't know what to think about, but he nodded in agreement, this grumpy old man didn't like the players interfering with his tactical arrangements.

Jones made some simple tactical arrangements, and Li Chenglong took a sip of water and continued to play with the substitutes.

In the dugout, Jones said to assistant coach Brown: "If that kid can prove his ability, we can develop him and Martin [Taylor] as the core of the team inside and out, maybe this season we can not only get rid of the bottom three, maybe we can also imagine the national championship." ”

The two were talking from the coach's bench when a loud voice suddenly erupted in the audience.

"Uh......h Wow......"

Jones looked up and saw that the kid on the field was raising his hand in celebration, and the fans in the stadium erupted in cheers.

Columbia University is very rich, and the stadium it repairs is also very high-end, so naturally there is a big screen, and Jones can see what is going on from the screen playback.

On the first ball after the timeout, Bruce Lee personally took the ball to the front court, and suddenly raised his hand to shoot two steps outside the three-point line, which made the fans in the audience let out a 'woo' exclamation, and then the ball actually hollowed into the net, and immediately the whole court exclamated 'wow'.

Li Chenglong was excited on the court, he raised his upper arm and continued to rise, and the fans also cheered.

Li Chenglong's excitement was that he found that the energy water bottle was indeed very effective, just after he drank water on the field, his consciousness was connected to the energy water bottle on his right hand, and when he drank it with a sip of ordinary water, he felt a hot current spread throughout his body, and he felt that he was full of energy.

The instructions for the energy water bottle replenish some of your physical strength after use, and make the shooting feel of the next short period of time get a partial improvement.

After he got on the court, he wanted to pass the ball, and with the ball he felt that basketball was like a part of his body at this time, and he would go wherever he wanted it to go, so he shot two steps outside the three-point line, and sure enough, it felt right, it really went in.

In the next few minutes, Li Chenglong was as unstoppable as Superman on the court, shooting three points in the breakthrough, and soon the opponent was defeated, but Li Chenglong found that the energy bottle could only make his first shot on the court have that magical feeling of being in, although the next shot still feels good, but there is no longer the first time that the shot must be scored, and the improvement of this feeling lasts for about 5 minutes.

But this also makes Li Chenglong very happy, using an energy water bottle once, you can be a real man for five minutes, and it also has the effect of scoring the first shot.

With three minutes left in the game, the Lions had a 17-point lead at 71-54, with the Beavers replacing their main players and Lee Chenglong being replaced by Jones.

In the end, the Columbia Lions defeated the MIT Beavers 78-52 to get off to a good start to the new NCAA season, and Lee Chenglong, as the Lions' longest-running main player, scored a game-high 26 points on 10-of-14 shooting, 4-of-6 three-point shooting, and 2-of-2 free throws, and also won the best player of the game.

26 points in a single game in the NCAA is a relatively good score, but the Ivy League has not been concerned for a long time, and the Lions' opponent is the MIT Beavers of the third-division league, which makes this game even less concerned, but it also makes Lee Chenglong famous in Columbia.

(To be continued)