The practice match between Xiangbei High School and Ryonan High School came to an end with the referee's final whistle.
After all, the Xiangbei High School led by Jinguji Budou was unable to recover the score in the first half and eventually lost the game by 13 points. Although they lost the game, the spirits of Jinguji Budou and others in Xiangbei were quite good and they did not feel frustrated or disappointed because of the loss.
It was just a practice match. Not only did they not use their best in the second half, but the situation in the second half was also quite stalemate. In terms of strength, Shohoku and Ryonan are on par with each other. The outcome of the two teams can probably only be determined in a cruel competition system such as a round-robin or knockout tournament.
At the same time, Sakuragi Hanamichi performed very well in the second half. Except for a little lack of coordination with the team, he performed well in other aspects and still surpassed Chiba Daishi.
This is very important for Xiangbei High School today.
The growth of Sakuragi Hanamichi will raise the overall ceiling of Xiangbei High School. Judging from Sakuragi Hanamichi's performance at this stage, in the county competition in a few months, Sakuragi Hanamichi will definitely become the heavyweight on the scale of victory for Xiangbei!
This was not only noticed by Coach Anzai and everyone in Shohoku, but also by Coach Takeo of Ryonan High School, Shinomiya Tano and others.
"Although the red-haired kid is still very immature, it is undeniable that he has the potential to become an excellent power forward."
"If Xiangbei still controls the rebounds during the county tournament, we may not be able to win the game."
"We were able to win the game today thanks to the gap we created in the first half."
"If we go directly against the main players of Xiangbei, it won't be so easy."
After the game, the players from Xiangbei and Ryonan lined up in the center of the court and shook hands with each other.
Shinomiya Tianye turned his head to take a look at the score difference between the two teams, and recalled the score difference in the first half. He suddenly felt tremendous pressure, but the joy of winning still made Shinomiya Tianye couldn't help but smile.
Off the court, Coach Anzai and Coach Tianoka were greeting each other and discussing some plans for joint training between the two teams after the game.
Today, when Xiangbei came to Ryonan High School, it was not just to play an unusual practice match with Ryonan and then end it. One of the purposes was also for the team to train together and communicate with each other.
While Coach Anzai and Coach Tianoka were discussing the joint training plan, the players of both teams walked off the court and sat in the rest area to recover.
“Ohhh!
”
"As expected of our second and third year seniors at Ryonan High School!"
"Facing such a strong Xiangbei High School, they actually won the game! You are worthy of being my respected senior!"
"Ah~ I never thought that Jinguji Budou from Xiangbei only played in the second half and scored 38 points. What a terrifying offensive ability!"
"However, even such a strong player still couldn't change Xiangbei's defeat. Our seniors from Ryonan High School are just too strong!
”
Shinomiya Tano and others returned to the rest area, and Aida Hikoichi enthusiastically handed water and towels to the players. Aida Hikoichi was also very happy about Ryonan High School's victory, and he expressed his feelings while offering his courtesy.
The speaker may not mean it, but the listener may take it seriously.
Shinomiya Tano and others, who were originally smiling, froze their smiles when they heard what Aida Hiko said.
"Hikoichi, tell me... How many points did Jinguji Budou score in the second half?!"
Sendoh looked at Aida Hikoichi with some suspicion and couldn't help but ask.
In the second half of the game, the offense and defense transitions of Ryonan and Shohoku were very fast. Sendoh was also immersed in the game and didn't really pay much attention to the players' data.
Takeshi Jinguji has always had a strong presence on the court, and Sendoh also knew that the opponent scored a lot of points in the second half, but at this moment he was shocked when he suddenly heard the data of 38 points.
Even Shinomiya Tano looked at Aida Hikoichi with a serious face. Like Sendoh, he was focused on the game and didn't pay attention to player statistics. When he heard that Jinguji Budou, who was playing against him, had scored 38 points, his first reaction was disbelief.
Because in his impression, Jinguji Budo shouldn't have scored so many points... .
“Emm… ..”
"38 points, it is 38 points, no mistake."
When Aida Hiko saw that Sendoh, Shinomiya Tano and other team members were focusing their attention on him, he immediately took out his little notebook, flipped through it hurriedly, and after confirming that everything was correct, he spoke to the other team members.
"What!
! It actually has 38 points! "
"That guy got 38 points? It feels like... that guy didn't play much."
"No way? I think Tian Ye's defense is pretty good. How did the opponent score so many points?"
Hikoichi Aida's words immediately made the rest area of Ryonan noisy. Except for a few beautiful goals he scored at the beginning when he was facing off against Tano Shinomiya, Takeshi Jinguji had not scored any beautiful goals at other times.
Compared to his opponent, Shimonoseki Tano, Jinguji Budo's performance in this game was mediocre.
But now Hikoichi Aida told them that the mediocre Jinguji Budou actually scored 38 points, which made all the Ryonan players a little unbelievable. Only some players recalled the previous games and their expressions became unusually serious.
After a brief moment of daze, Shinomiya Tano suddenly had an idea in his mind and asked Aida Hikoichi:
"Yanyi, did you keep track of his shots? How many times did he take the shot? What was his hit rate?"
Hearing this, Aida Hikoichi nodded heavily and replied:
"He actually took quite a few shots, 20 in the second half."
"but... ."
At this point, Aida Hiko paused and said in a deep voice: "He made 9 of 11 three-pointers. He has scored 27 points just from three-pointers."
Hearing this data, the rest area of Ryonan gasped. This data was really shocking. Over 80% of the three-point shooting percentage was achieved by Jinguji Budo in the face of Shinomiya Tano's defense.
This scoring efficiency...
"alright!"
"Don't dwell on how many points the other team has scored."
"What you need to care about now is not how many points the opponent's main players scored, but how the opponent used those 20 shots!"
Just as the Ryonan players were looking at each other in amazement at Jinguji Budo's terrifying offensive efficiency, Coach Takeo had somehow returned to the Ryonan rest area and spoke loudly to everyone.
"coach!"
With the arrival of Coach Tiangang, the eyes of all the players of Ryonan were focused on Coach Tiangang. When Coach Tiangang saw the players looking at him, he waved his hand with a calm expression and continued:
"Didn't any of you notice?"
"In the second half of Xiangbei High School's offense, no matter how our defense changed, the ball would definitely pass through Jinguji Budo's hands."
"Only when Jinguji Budo makes a decision, Xiangbei's offense will really start to work."
"The offensive system of Xiangbei in the second half was built entirely around Jinguji Budo."
"Jinguji Budo is their heart! It's actually very easy to defeat Shohoku. As long as you can pierce their heart, you can win the game!"
Coach Tian Gang watched the entire second half of the game from the sidelines and came to his conclusion.
but... ..
Coach Tanaoka himself knew that although it was easy to say how to defeat Shohoku, it was not so easy to actually do it. Shinomiya Tano's one-on-one defense was already the best in the team, and even if you looked across the country, you might not be able to find a player with a stronger one-on-one defense ability than Shinomiya Tano.
But even so, it still couldn't limit the performance of Takeshi Jinguji. To defeat Shohoku High School, it would probably not be an easy task starting with Takeshi Jinguji.
However, players like Shohoku High School may not be able to win the game easily if they do not defeat Jinguji Budo, even if they block all other players.
"Coach... Even Tian Ye can't stop the opponent's performance. What can we do to truly suppress Xiangbei?"
"If we still play like this in the county competition, we may not win like we did today."
Sendoh lowered his head, pondered for a long time, and then asked. Not only him, almost all the Ryonan players were lost in thought. After a practice match, everyone felt the difficulty of Jinguji Budo.
"Don't always think about blocking Jinguji Budo after he gets the ball."
"We have to find a way to prevent him from getting the ball!"
"Okay, don't think about these things for now, get ready, and start training!"
"In the joint training with Xiangbei, you all have to perform well!"
"Not only do we have to win on the court, we also cannot lose on the training ground!"
Coach Tian Gang clapped his hands and encouraged his players loudly.
Afterwards, under the organization of Coach Tanaoka, all the players from Ryonan High School and Shohoku High School were organized into mixed teams and began training.
The training content is mainly based on the daily training content of Ryonan High School, including a huge amount of physical training and basic training. The overall training difficulty is not high, but it is very torturous.
After a training session, even a physically fit person like Sakuragi Hanamichi could only barely hold on, and his calves were still shaking slightly after the training session. Even Sakuragi Hanamichi was like this, not to mention the other Xiangbei players, most of them could not keep up in the middle of the training session.
Only a very few people persevered to the end.
The situation of Ryonan High School, which led this training, was actually not much better than that of Shohoku.
Coach Tanaoka wanted to let the players show off their skills on the training field, but the more they practiced, the more frightened they became. The physical fitness of the Xiangbei players was actually very good, so they unconsciously increased the intensity of training. However, Coach Tanaoka failed to control it well and increased the intensity at once, so few of Ryonan's own players could stick with it.
Fortunately, the joint training was completed safely and successfully, and no player was injured due to excessive training.
After the Xiangbei players got on the bus back to school, Coach Tiangang hurried back to the gym and asked the school doctor to give the players a physical examination.
... .
In the evening, the afterglow of the setting sun shines into the car.
Takeshi Jinguji leaned against the window, listening to the snoring in the car and looking at the scenery outside the window.
The sunset scenery on the Shonan coast is beautiful, which calms Budo's heart.
Jinguji Budo gained a lot from the practice match with Ryonan High School. While he had a clear understanding of the strength of Ryonan High School, he also had an intuitive understanding of the strength of the first-year students like Sakuragi Hanamichi.
They will have intensive training before the county competition. By the time of the county competition, Sakuragi Hanamichi, Rukawa Kaede and other first-year students will become the weight for Xiangbei to defeat Ryonan!
... .
After the practice match with Ryonan High School, Shohoku High School returned to normal team training after a two-day rest.
Since the practice match, Coach Anzai started giving special lessons to Sakuragi Hanamichi after the evening training.
And what Sakuragi Hanamichi is going to learn in the special class is shooting!
"Sakuragi, look at the basket, bend your knees slightly, and raise the ball above your head."
"Don't lift it so high, just a little higher above your forehead."
"Relax your muscles, open the five fingers of your auxiliary hand, and don't press on the basketball! Support it, support it!"
Although it was a special class taught by Coach Anzai, the task of teaching Sakuragi Hanamichi how to shoot fell on Jinguji Takeshi. There was no other way, as Takeshi was drafted by Coach Anzai during extra practice at the gym.
But Wudao didn't refuse this task. He also wanted to practice shooting. Now he just wanted to take Sakuragi with him. Wudao was not stupid. He specially called Sakuragi Hanamichi's friends. These guys would never miss the opportunity to see Sakuragi make a fool of himself.
With the guys from the Sakuragi Corps around, Wudao can safely hand over some of the hard work to these big grudges.
Most of the time, I practice martial arts by myself, and then correct some of Sakuragi Hanamichi's movements.
It's true that Sakuragi is a genius. He learns very quickly and can quickly grasp the key points of shooting. With the help of martial arts, after shooting more than a hundred balls, he has become quite good at it.
Although Sakuragi Hanamichi is very strong, his touch when shooting is very soft and his ball sense is also excellent. In Budo's opinion, Sakuragi has the potential to become an excellent pitcher.
It's just that his hand shape and posture are still a little unfamiliar, and sometimes his shooting action will go off track subconsciously. However, this detail will slowly disappear as Sakuragi accumulates more shots.
Budou didn't come up with a training plan of hitting 20,000 balls a week. He thought that kind of last-minute training method was not advisable. Budou just asked Sakuragi to practice 500 more balls after training every day.
As for how many balls Sakuragi will practice besides these 500 balls, that is not something that Budo needs to consider.
The purpose of Wudao's training plan is not to increase Sakuragi's combat effectiveness at this stage. He just wants Sakuragi to develop the habit of practicing shooting now.
The power of habit is the truly terrifying force!
All high school basketball teams in Kanagawa Prefecture have begun preparing for the county tournament at the end of July, and undercurrents are surging in the high school basketball world.
Shortly after Sakuragi Hanamichi started his shooting training, Kainan High School secretly went to Aichi Prefecture and had a practice game with Aiwa Academy there.
We don't know what the result of that practice match was, but after that practice match, Coach Takato began to use his connections to find various national-level strong teams from other counties for Hainan to come to Kanagawa to play practice matches with them.
However, after many practice matches, other schools in Kanagawa Prefecture did not receive any news. Even after the practice match with Xiangbei, Coach Tanaoka invited Kainan, but was rejected by Coach Takato.
After a period of high-intensity practice matches, Hainan began closed training, and no one knew what Coach Gaotou was doing.
But the perceptive Coach Tian Gang knew that Gao Tou was probably up to no good.
...
Life is like this sometimes. Often after a period of ordinary days, unexpected things will happen around you.
On this day, Jinguji Takeshi rushed to the gym after class as usual. However, when he arrived at the gym, he was surprised to find that the gym, which usually had few people at this time of day, was now packed with people.
The court in the center of the stadium was surrounded by the crowd, and from time to time, cheers would erupt from the crowd.
"What's going on? Did Coach Anxi arrange a practice match today? How come I didn't know about it?"
With such doubts in his mind, Wu Dao squeezed into the crowd and headed towards the stadium. Not long after, he saw the situation in the stadium clearly.
There were two teams playing in the stadium, wearing white and blue jerseys respectively. The players on the field were all strangers, and their faces were very young, and it was obvious at a glance that they were not high school students.
Confused, Wu Dao looked at the white team on the field, looked at the school name on the jersey, and couldn't help but murmured:
"Teiko Middle School...Teiko Middle School?"
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .