The roster of players from Xiangbei High School to participate in the winter trials was submitted to the organizing committee of the competition as early as a week ago.
There was even an episode when the organizing committee was reviewing the player list.
The previous ban of Jinguji Budo during the Autumn National Sports period caused a lot of uproar in Kanagawa Prefecture, but these voices later came to an end when Kanagawa Prefecture finally won the national championship.
However, as the winter season approached, the matter was brought up again by fans, and some fans even directly "rushed" to the Kanai Prefecture Basketball Association office.
This also reminded certain leaders of what Jinguji Martial Arts said in front of the media.
Since you look down on neon basketball, why don’t you stop playing in neon basketball? !
This is what the leaders thought and did. Therefore, after the Xiangbei High School player list was submitted, these people more or less inquired about the Xiangbei player list through some channels.
When they learned that Jinguji Budo's name was not on the player list, these leaders were also overjoyed.
If you try to do anything during the Winter Games, you will inevitably be criticized. The influence of the ban on Jinguji Martial Arts from the Autumn Kingdom Sports before is still there. If you do it again now, I am afraid more people will pay attention.
Now that Jinguji Martial Arts is so conscious of not participating in this competition, this saves the leaders a lot of thought.
As the game day progresses, training at Shohoku High School is officially suspended.
The players began to recharge their batteries and prepare for the next county trials.
In the past two days, the competition groups have been announced. As a strong team that won the national championship this year, Xiangbei High School naturally had a bye in the first stage of the competition as a seed.
And there is no strong team in Group A. The strongest team may be like Wuyuan High School.
On the opening day of the winter trials, Jinguji Budo appeared on the team wearing the red uniform of Shohoku High School. Different from standing at the front of the queue as usual, in this year's competition, Jinguji Budo stood at the end of the team.
The opening ceremony of the winter selection competition attracted a lot of media coverage.
As mentioned before, the Winter Selection Competition is a large-scale event organized by many parties. One of the leaders is Neon's second largest media, the Asahi Shimbun.
The Asahi Shimbun's sports department will follow up and report on the Kanagawa Prefecture trials. This kind of treatment is not available in all county trials.
The reason why I follow Kanagawa Prefecture’s prefectural trials is simply because there are several players in Kanagawa Prefecture who are attracting national attention. If I follow them and report on them, I can not only recoup the cost of personnel, but I can even gain a lot of attention!
During the opening ceremony, the media’s lenses focused on the two teams of Xiangbei High School and Lingnan High School. When the camera swept over Shohoku High School, the reporters discovered a strange thing, that is, Jinguji Martial Arts, which had been at the forefront in previous years, actually fell to the back of the queue.
The player standing at the front of the row is actually a short player with curly hair.
A reporter took out the information from his bag and after hurriedly flipping through it, he recognized Ryota Miyagi.
Neon is an extremely hierarchical country. As the captain, Jinguji Budo stood at the back of the team during the opening ceremony, which was a strange thing.
"Isn't that Jinguji Martial Arts? Isn't he the captain of Shohoku High School? Why is he standing at the back of the team?"
"The one at the front is Ryota Miyagi from Shohoku High School."
"How is this going?"
The reporters suppressed their doubts and waited until the opening ceremony was over before they approached Xiangbei High School and others for a brief interview.
Through interviews, the reporters got the shocking news that the captain of Shohoku High School, Jinguji Budō, has resigned, and they also learned that Jinguji Budō will study in the United States next year.
For the backwater of neon basketball, this is shocking news.
They had heard about Jinguji Martial Arts studying in the United States before, but at that time, the reputation of Jinguji Martial Arts was not as big as it is now, and no news was revealed before going to the United States. But now, Jinguji Martial Arts Martial Arts is no longer a little unknown person.
As the captain of the championship team, Jinguji Budo is known as the number one high school student. His reputation in Neon is equivalent to the reputation of high school James in the United States.
It can be said that it is attracting everyone's attention.
At the same time, reporters also learned that Jinguji Martial Arts would be absent from the winter trials, and a series of big news dropped.
After the interview ended, the reporters hurriedly left to prepare their reports.
This time, I'm afraid it will cause some trouble again. For the prefectural competition in Kanagawa Prefecture, many spectators from other prefectures came specially to watch the game. If they knew that Jinguji Budo would not be on stage, these people would definitely shout "Refund the ticket" "of.
After the opening ceremony, the first knockout round of the winter selection began in the afternoon.
However, there were only a few spectators in this first round of the game. Most of them were participating teams watching the game in order to get to know their possible opponents.
As for Xiangbei High School, they did not ignore the opponents they would face next because of their own strength.
At Miyagi Ryota's suggestion, the players all came to the audience, ready to see the strength of their opponents in the same group. Being the captain for the first time, Miyagi Ryota was somewhat nervous. He showed a certain amount of attention to any opponent.
He didn't want to cause the team to get into trouble because of his negligence.
If so, would he still have the nerve to continue being the captain of Shohoku High School?
The team in the same group as Shohoku High School is a high school called Shengatai, and their opponent is Daihoku High School.
The winners of these two teams will become their opponents in the second stage of Xiangbei High School.
In this year's IH, neither team was able to reach the top 16 in the county, and they were actually very weak.
In a few months, these two teams have not completed the so-called "transformation". Looking at one game, the two teams made more than 20 mistakes in total, which is very consistent with the standard of the "Neon High School Basketball Team" .
In the stands, Jinguji Martial Arts dozed off in boredom. He was confused by this competition. His professionalism was not even as good as the village BA.
But unlike him, the other Shohoku team members all looked very interested. Even Caiko and Haruko were still using their notebooks to record the game data of the two arrow figures in a serious manner.
Seeing that serious look, Wu Dao was speechless.
These Xiangbei players were too nervous. They were all experienced players, but they still looked like this when facing such an opponent.
What Budo didn't know was that it was precisely because of what he said to Sakuragi Hanamichi and others that day, "I will be in the rest area, watching you." that made Sakuragi and others so nervous, and the nervousness of several of them , and also passed it on to other players.
This is what leads to the current atmosphere of the team.
However, although Jinguji Budo was bored, he still watched the game with the team members. When they got up to leave, Sakuragi and others gathered with Miyagi Ryota to discuss the game strategy. Budo looked positive Sakuragi and others couldn't help but have a smile on their faces.
"Don't worry, martial arts senior."
"Sakura-san and the others will definitely work hard!"
Just when Budokai was behind the team looking at Sakuragi and others who were having a heated discussion, a waxy voice came from behind Budoka. He turned around and saw Haruko looking at Jinguji Budokai with a smile on her face. He said with relief.
"Well, Haruko, Ayako is already a sophomore in high school this year. Next year, the team will be entrusted to you."
"This kid Sakuragi is easy to get carried away, so don't give him good looks too often!"
Lowering his head and glancing at Haruko who was walking beside him, Budo said with a smile. Hearing this, Haruko covered her mouth and chuckled, waved her hands and said, "Sakura-san is a genius."
"He doesn't need anything more from me."
Budao looked at Haruko and saw sincerity in her eyes. It seems that Haruko truly believes that Sakuragi Hanamichi is a genius from the bottom of her heart.
Seeing Haruko like this, Martial Arts couldn't help but feel relieved.
This kid Sakuragi, despite his tall appearance, is actually like a child at heart. With Haruko by his side, Sakuragi Hanamichi will not go astray on the road of basketball.
Girls' yearning, for adolescent boys like Sakuragi, is nothing but chicken blood.
Two days later.
The winter selection competition day came to the third day, and the first round of knockout rounds was completed in two and a half days. Unlike the back-to-back format of the national competition, players in the county's winter trials often have plenty of time to rest.
And it was on this morning that Dabei High School, which had won the first stage of the competition, met the opponent they least wanted to encounter, Xiangbei High School.
"Beep——"
In the stadium, as a long whistle sounded, players from Xianghoku High School entered the stadium one after another to warm up. Jinguji Budo, wearing his team uniform, sat upright on the edge of the stadium without moving.
Some time ago, the media broke the news that Jinguji Budo would not participate in the winter trials. They thought it was "fake news", but when the audience saw that Jinguji Budo did not take off his coat during the warm-up period and moved around, they realized this. The news is true.
Suddenly, the stands became noisy. Some spectators in the front row were a little close to the Shohoku rest area and shouted directly towards the martial arts: "Come on, Jinguji Budo! I came to Kanagawa specifically to watch you play. of!"
Facing the shouts of the audience, Wu Dao just glanced at the stands in surprise, then showed an apologetic smile, then turned his head and returned his gaze to the players who were warming up.
The warm-up time is almost twenty minutes.
After the warm-up, the players from both sides returned to the rest area, and the coach made the final arrangements.
"Budo, it's up to you to do the coaching work for these games and participate. I believe in your ability!" Coach Anzai said with a smile to Jinguji Budo after many players in Shobei returned to the rest area.
After receiving Coach Anxi's approval, Budo didn't hesitate and nodded directly. He slowly stood up from his seat, looked at the players in front of him, and said:
"In the past few days, I can see that you attach great importance to today's opponent, or in other words, you attach great importance to all opponents."
"But no matter how much we attach importance to it, we still need to make reasonable arrangements so that suitable players can deal with different opponents!"
"In today's game, I think the starting team can make some adjustments to allow young players with little experience in previous games to exercise more."
"Yasuda Yasharu, Shiozaki Tetsuji, Kuratani Sora, Oda Ryumasa and Sakuragi Hanamichi, the five of you, as the starters, go to face Daihoku High School!"
After saying that, Jinguji Budo looked at Coach Anxi on the side. Sensing Budo's gaze, Coach Anxi nodded slightly and expressed his approval.
The players also saw Coach Anxi nod, and the players who had not got the chance to start sat on their seats one after another. The starting players gathered around Budao, waiting for Budao's instructions.
"Center, Oda Ryumasa, Sakuragi, you play power forward and have offensive tasks at the same time, Yasuda plays point guard, Shiozaki small forward, Kurutani Sora you play shooting guard."
“I won’t go into details about tactics, just follow your usual training routine!”
"Do you understand everything?"
As soon as Martial Arts finished speaking, Sakuragi and the others roared loudly.
On the side of the court, the referees on the referee's bench were also attracted by the movement in Xiangbei and turned their heads to look over.
"Xiangbei's momentum is very strong! He is worthy of being the IH national champion."
Looking at the momentum of Xiangbei High School, even the referee couldn't help but look at Xiangbei High School. On the other hand, he looked at Dabei High School on the other side of the court.
Dabei's players seemed to have had their courage taken away. Every one of them was dejected. Facing Xianghoku High School, the game had not even started yet, and they were already feeling dejected.
With the referee's whistle, players from both sides began to enter.
The Daihoku players saw the familiar figure of Sakuragi Hanamichi in Shohoku's starting team, but the other Shohoku players felt very strange to them.
Turning his head to look at the Xiangbei bench, he found that several famous players were sitting on the bench. This discovery made the Dabei players excited.
When the players took their positions in the center circle, the Dabei players discovered that there was a short man in the Xiangbei team who was less than 160cm tall.
With his thin appearance, he looked very easy to bully, which made the Dabei players who were still a little disappointed became happy.
With such a Xiangbei High School, they really may not have any hope at all!
Although there is a national-level power forward like Sakuragi Hanamichi leading the team, after all, it is just one person!
"Beep——"
After a long whistle, the basketball was thrown high into the air by the referee. When the basketball was in the air, Oda Ryumasa also took off, accurately grasped the timing of the jump ball, and moved the ball towards the backcourt.
First-year Oda Ryumasa is now just 190cm tall. Although he is as tall as Sakuragi and Nango, he still has all his advantages when facing centers from ordinary schools.
The basketball fell directly towards the Shohoku backcourt, and Yasuda Yasharu took it in his hands. Taking possession of the basketball, Yasuda Yasharu's eyes quickly swept over all the players, and then he threw the chess piece directly to the frontcourt.
Sensing Yasuda's pass, the Dabei players were all startled. They didn't expect that Yasuda Yoshiharu would pass the ball like this, because they didn't see anyone going to the frontcourt at all.
As everyone ran back and swept towards their own half, they actually saw a thin figure wearing No. 15 jersey, already standing on the edge of the three-point line, holding the ball in one hand.
"Is it that dwarf? When?!"
Before the Dabei players could return to defense, Kuratani Sora had already received a pass from his teammate. He simply adjusted his posture and shot a three-pointer.
Under the astonished gazes of everyone, the basketball crossed the half court and accurately fell into the net with a crisp sound.
"Uh-huh!!"
(End of chapter)
