The violent slam dunk by Shinomiya Tano after his entry pushed the atmosphere of the audience to a climax.
Ryonan High School was the national champion of IH last year, and the team has a lot of fans. Shinomiya Tano, the ace of Ryonan High School, has even more fans.
The audience's disgust with Izumi Asao's arrogant attitude turned into support for Ryonan High School and Shinomiya Tano.
Amid the cheers of the audience, the Qiuyue High School players, who had become invisible, hurriedly left the field, and shortly after they left, the Luoan High School players were also preparing to leave.
The rest area used by Ryonan High School for the game was exactly the same rest area used by Luoan High School. When the Luoan players were about to leave, the Ryonan players were already walking towards the rest area.
The players from both teams crossed each other, and just when Izumi Asao passed by Shinomiya Tano, he suddenly stopped and called out to Shinomiya Tano:
"Hey! Shinomiya Tano!"
Izumi Asao's shout attracted the attention of Ryonan and the others, who all turned their heads to look at Izumi Asao. Shinomiya Tano also stopped, put his hands in his trouser pockets, tilted his head with his chin slightly raised, looked at Izumi Asao, and uttered a light "eh"
"Hmm?" (pitch up)
Izumi Asao looked at Shinomiya Tano, his mouth opened slightly into an arc, revealing a brilliant smile, and said:
"Don't lose before you meet our Luo An!"
"I will destroy you with my own hands!"
Izumi Asao clenched his fists, making a "kaka" sound with his hands, and shouted at Shinomiya Tano.
"?"
"You are...what?"
Shinomiya Tano had an indifferent expression. After answering casually, he turned his head, ignored Izumi Asao, and walked towards the rest area.
After Shinomiya Tano left, everyone in Ryonan looked at Izumi Ahao strangely, and followed Shinomiya Tano one after another. Yueyue Hongming, who was at the end of the team, stopped in front of Izumi Ahao.
"Go, go."
"Don't flirt with me. Tian Ye doesn't have time for a small character like you."
Yue Go Hiroaki waved at Izumi Asao as if he was driving away a stray dog, and then, without paying attention to Izumi Asao's reaction, he quickly caught up with Shinomiya Tano and the others and went to the rest area.
Izumi Asao felt greatly insulted, his face flushed red, and after staring at the backs of the people from Ryonan for a while, he snorted coldly and whispered to himself: "Well, let's wait and see..."
The national competition schedule is quite tight.
Less than ten minutes after the game between Luoan and Qiuyue High School ended, the players from Lingnan and Jinshan Commercial entered the stadium, and the conference cleaning staff quickly cleaned up the rest areas and venues on both sides.
At the referee's signal, the coaches of both teams shook hands in front of the referee's seat, and then the players were allowed to enter the field to warm up.
Ryonan High School made very thorough preparations before the game. After the referee informed them that they could enter the field for warm-up, Coach Takeo didn't say anything nonsense and directly asked the players to start warming up.
During the warm-up phase, Shinomiya Tano and his Ryonan High School did not do anything amazing. All the Ryonan players just passed the ball and made layups to warm up, without any "strong temperament" in sight.
However, this relatively simple warm-up by Ryonan High School put a lot of pressure on their opponent, Jinshan Commercial.
That feeling of oppression enveloped all the players of Jinshan Commercial. As the game approached, even the breathing of the players of Jinshan Commercial became abnormally rapid.
The tension and pressure caused the players of Jinshan Commercial to consume more energy than usual just by a simple warm-up before the game even started.
The coach of Jinshan Commercial noticed the abnormality of the players. In the second half of the warm-up time, the coach of Jinshan called the players back to the rest area early, hoping to use encouragement to help the players get rid of their nervousness.
Coach Tian Gang also noticed the situation of the Jinshan Commercial players. When the players finished warming up and returned to the court, he said to the players:
"Did you see that?"
"Those members of Jinshan Commercial have already started to get nervous and scared before they even started fighting with us."
"They are one of the top 16 teams in the country, but they are still so timid in front of us, Ryonan!"
"This is the power that we at Ryonan High School possess."
"I tell you all this because I want to tell you that we, Ryonan, are the strongest! Everyone is afraid of meeting us."
"Hit them with all your might! Don't hold back. Crush them to pieces!"
Coach Tiangang said, clapped his hands and encouraged his players.
Today, the players sent by Ryonan High School were somewhat different from previous games. In addition to Sendoh Akira and Shinomiya Tano, the starting center was replaced by sophomore Kan Ping from Uozumi Jun, and the power forward was also changed from Hanagata to Fukuda Yoshitaka.
Even the point guard position was no longer played by Kenji Fujima, but by second-year player Tomoyuki Uekusa.
Coach Tiangang's words were mainly directed at these three people.
In the previous game, Ryonan High School also made the same arrangement. He would give young players more playing opportunities. Unless Shinomiya Tano and Sendoh could no longer maintain the situation, Coach Takeo would consider replacing them with the third-year main players.
However, the national competition had already reached the third round, and such a situation did not occur in the game that Ryonan High School played after the bye.
Shimono Shinomiya and Akira Sendoh are enough to deal with opponents in the first few rounds of the national competition.
Jinshan Commercial, in front of Lingnan, is fundamentally no different from the opponents they have encountered before.
Warm-up time is over.
After a long whistle sounded from the referee's bench, a referee walked into the court with the ball.
Players from both teams began to enter the field and walked to the center circle to take their positions. As the players from Ryonan High School entered the field, the cheers from the stands became louder.
“Beep!”
After the players got into position, the referee blew the whistle and threw the ball high into the air.
...
Five minutes...
The match between Ryonan High School and Jinshan Commercial was decided in just five minutes.
The timer on the scoreboard just jumped to 5 minutes. On the court, Shimoya received the ball from his teammate in the middle distance. After turning around quickly and sweeping the ball, Shimoya made no feints and went straight to the ball and made a strong breakthrough.
At the moment when Shimoya Tsunayoshi accelerated to break through, his body directly hit the defender, pushing the defender away by nearly one meter, and then he took the ball and took two big steps towards the basket.
At this moment, the defensive player of Jinshan Commercial seemed unwilling to watch Shigong Tianye score, and grabbed the arm of Shigong Tianye who was passing by quickly.
However, something surprising happened to everyone. The defensive player who took the initiative to pull Shinomiya Tanno was actually knocked down by the rushing Shinomiya Tanno and fell to the ground with a "thump". Shinomiya Tanno, who had already started to gather the ball, was not affected at all. He kept his posture unchanged and easily broke into the basket. He suddenly jumped up and slammed the ball into the basket.
17:6, five minutes into the game, Ryonan High School had widened the gap to 11 points.
As Shimomiya Tano scored a slam dunk, the scoreboard ticked and the referee's whistle sounded.
Not only was Shigong Tianye's dunk score valid, but Shigong Tianye also got a chance for a free throw. The Jinshan Commercial team members, who were already under great pressure to play the game, completely lost their spirits because of the referee's penalty.
With Shinomiya Tano steadily scoring the free throw, the score between the two teams came to 18:6, and the difference reached 12 points.
The Jinshan players, who had lost their spirit, began to make frequent mistakes. Originally, the players' offense was quite methodical. Although they always missed the shot, at least they had the chance to shoot.
But after losing confidence, not to mention organizing an effective offensive threat, even dribbling the ball across half court became difficult.
The difference between a strong team and a weak team is even more obvious in the back line.
Although the defender of Ryonan High School in this game was the sophomore Tomoyuki Uekusa, Uekusa, who was in a relaxed state of mind, played very easily, while his opponent was tense. As a result of the difference between the two, Uekusa was able to defend well.
Can frequently stop the opponent, thus forcing them to pass the ball.
Although Uekusa does not have the ability to steal the ball, he is able to stop the opponent and force the opponent to pass the ball, which is considered a very good defense.
The targets that the Kaneyama defenders can pass the ball to are often the defense of Shinomiya Tano or Sendoh Akira.
Under the defense of these two people, it was difficult for Jinshan players to drop the ball, let alone dribble the ball for a distance.
Under the pressure of Ryonan High School, Jinshan was completely defeated.
At the end of the first half, the score between the two teams was 53:17, with a difference of 36 points. The huge difference in the score made the game lose suspense early on.
In the second half, Coach Takeo did not replace second-year players such as Uekusa Tomoyuki, but instead replaced Shinomiya Tano and Sendoh with Fujima and Uozumi.
Yoshitaka Fukuda, who originally played power forward, switched to small forward.
After the substitution, Ryonan High School still maintained a strong offensive capability. Under the strong attack of the Ryonan players, Jinshan was unable to organize an effective defense.
At the end of the game, the difference between the two teams was more than 60 points. As the whistle sounded at the end of the game, Jinshan ended their national journey.
The audience in the stands cheered loudly for the winning Ryonan High School, and no one paid attention to Jinshan who lost the game.
After the match of Ryonan High School ended, the players of Xiangbei stood up and left the stands. They stayed to watch the match of Ryonan High School.
The result was not beyond the expectations of everyone in Xiangbei. The strength of Ryonan High School was simply not on the same level as their opponents, and they won the game easily.
As for the next opponent of Xiangbei High School? Sorry, Jinguji Budo and his team didn't take their opponent seriously at all.
…
The next day was still the second round of the national competition, but it was a match between Group C and Group D. On this day, only Coach Anxi went to watch the match from Xiangbei High School.
The team members, led by Mitsui Hisashi, did some simple adaptive exercises in the hotel's gym, and then rested.
In the back-to-back format, it is very important for players to maintain a good physical condition.
…
"Today is the quarter-finals."
"If we win, we will be the top four."
"Everyone, cheer up and deal with this game well. After today's game, it will be back-to-back games!"
Early in the morning, in the parking lot of the hotel where Xiangbei High School was staying, Mitsui Hisashi was giving a pre-match mobilization speech before the players were about to board the bus.
"Don't worry, Captain Mitsui. No matter what opponent we encounter, we will not take it lightly!"
"Yeah, with Jinguji-senpai and you here, a school like Meiho can't possibly pose any threat to us."
Kiyota Nobunaga and Nango Koichiro ran to Mitsui Shou's side, one on each side, and flattered him. Mitsui Shou also smiled when he heard this, and then looked at Jinguji Budo and asked:
"Hey, Budo!"
"Why don't you say a few words? Today's game is very important to us."
"Our opponent Mingpeng is an A-level team anyway. Shouldn't we take it seriously?"
At this time, Jinguji Takeshi was standing next to the bus with a bag on his back. His attention was not on Mitsui Hisashi and the others at all. His head was nodding off and he was actually dozing off.
After being called by Mitsui Shou, Wu Dao slowly opened his eyes, scratched his hair, and said casually:
"I'm so tired, I'm actually a little sleepy."
"Xiao San, what are you talking about?"
"Don't waste time, let's go to the competition venue quickly. I hope Mingpeng can show some strength so that I can get some interest."
As Wu Dao spoke, he saw the door of the bus in front of him open, and then he walked directly onto the bus.
Mitsui Shou looked at Jinguji Budo who was out of his mind, and couldn't help but shook his head, then shouted to the team members: "Let's go to the venue."
…
The national competition officially started the top 8 to top 4 competition.
Group A, where Xiangbei High School is located, will play the first game of the morning.
At 7:30 in the morning, the players of Xiangbei High School arrived at the venue on time. Led by Coach Anxi, they walked through the player tunnel and entered the stadium.
At this time, the stands surrounding the stadium were already filled with spectators watching the game. The moment Xiangbei High School entered the stadium, a tsunami of cheers poured into the stadium.
Although they were playing in Hiroshima, Shohoku High School felt as if they were back in Kanagawa Prefecture. Almost all the spectators were cheering for Shohoku High School.
Compared with the high popularity of Xiangbei High School, Meipeng Industry, which walked out of the player tunnel right after, seemed a little lacking in appearance.
The cheers were sparse, and the cheers from the few audience members from Mingpeng's own school were easily drowned out by the cheers of others.
During the warm-up period, the Xiangbei players entered the court after changing into their jerseys.
In today's game, Coach Anxi no longer had any intention of hiding his strength, and the players he sent out were the strongest players in each position of Xiangbei High School.
The center is Takenori Akagi, the power forward is Hanamichi Sakuragi, the small forward is Takenori Jinguji, and the point guard position is taken by Mitsui Hisashi. At the same time, the shooting guard position is assigned to Rukawa Kaede.
The five players on the field ranged from freshman to junior.
During the warm-up phase, these five starters occupied more of the warm-up court and had the ball for a longer time.
The competition with Mingpeng Industry is about to begin!
… … … … … … …