In the first half, under the leadership of Sendō and Naito, Lingnan won by nearly 20 points.
The advantage is not insignificant, but Coach Tianoka is cautious. He would rather be overly cautious than want any accidents.
Therefore, at the beginning of the second half, Lingnan sent out its main force, hoping to further expand its advantage and defeat Hinodexi in one fell swoop.
After all, Hinode Nishi is not the Shohoku team in the drama year. It does not have the fighting spirit and mentality to never give up. Under the waves of Lingnan's offensive, it did not take long in the second half to show a collapse trend.
The defeat was like a mountain, as was the case in Hinodesai. The players' fighting spirit was shattered, and there was no hope of victory. They even felt like foreigners on the court.
Not long after, coach Tian Gang waved his hand and began to send substitutes on.
In order to avoid accidents, he did not replace all the main players, but kept Naito, who had more energy, on the court.
In this game, Sendō seemed to score more points, but Naito still contributed the most.
Without Naito's defense, rebounding, and powerful dunks, Lingnan would not have been able to defeat Hinode Nishi in such a short period of time.
Coach Taoka is quite satisfied with Naito's performance.
Although Naito has not completely improved his bad habits from rugby, he is much better than before and everything is moving in a good direction. He believes that after waiting for a while, Naito can be polished to perfection.
As for Xiandao, Coach Tianoka can see that he is a little entangled in playing. He always has difficulty restraining his desire to attack. Now it is not an ordinary difficulty for him to organize the entire team's offense.
The current Immortal still plays the role of a terminator rather than a battlefield commander, similar to Rukawa Kaede before his transformation in the plot.
There were no surprises. By the end of the game, Lingnan defeated Hinodesai and successfully advanced to the joint finals.
In this game, Sendō scored 32 points and Naito scored 23 points, 15 rebounds and 4 blocks. Their first performances were perfect.
Not long after, the next game started.
The two sides are Shohoku from the fourth group and the seeded team Tsukutake. This is also one of the highlights of this round.
As a veteran team, Tsukutake has a gorgeous style of play and is very popular with the audience, while Shohoku was the dark horse of Kanagawa Prefecture last year and has an excellent and popular player like Mitsui.
Akagi: What about me?
In the eyes of the audience, Mitsui is stronger than Akagi, and he is still responsible for the good looks of Shohoku. He was once known as the four super rising stars of Kanagawa along with Uozumi, Fujima and Makino. In last year's winter divisional match against Hainan Affiliated High School, In the first battle, God blocked God and killed Buddha, and Buddha blocked Buddha, establishing victory in one fell swoop and winning him a large number of fans.
Compared with Mitsui's popularity, Akagi had better forget it.
Akagi does not have the elegant style of play like Mitsui, nor can he achieve the brutal play style and exaggerated statistics like Uozumi. It is normal that he is not as popular as outside star players.
Even in an era when centers are king, outside players are still generally more popular. This can be seen from the top vote-getters of all NBA All-Star games, such as Michael Jordan, Dr. J, George Gervin, and Magic. Teacher etc.
Tsukutake's strength has not been lost. Judging from the strength on paper, it is not much worse than Xiangbei. He even has a considerable advantage in cooperating with Tsukutake.
This is something that can't be helped. Shohoku's starting lineup is all first- and second-year players, and Tsukutake is mainly third-year players. Tsukutake's cooperation is naturally better than Shohoku's.
However, Tsukutake has serious flaws. They have no shortage of outstanding players, but they only lack ace players who can carry the appearance.
Tomokazu Udai and Hiroshi Natsume are both excellent, but they can only be regarded as role players and it is difficult to lead Tsukutake further.
After the game started, both sides mainly focused on testing, and neither could do anything to the other for the time being.
Tsukutake's offensive rhythm is very fast, and the cooperation of the Shohoku team is relatively unfamiliar. They can often easily tear apart the defense and score through tacit cooperation.
As for the Shohoku team, Tsukutake was unable to limit the performance of Mitsui and Akagi, and they asked for everything, especially Takenori Akagi. Tsukutake's shortcomings of not having a tall inside line were completely exposed.
Akagi played very well. With the cooperation of him and Iwata Miaki, Tsukutake was defeated inside by a direct attack.
As for Miyagi Ryota, his performance was not as good as Kigure because his opponent was Natsume Hiroshi who had a similar style.
Natsume Hiroshi and Miyagi are similar in height and weight, and have about the same speed.
The difference is that Natsume Hiroshi developed the COSCO shot and had more experience in the game, which actually overwhelmed Miyagi.
After the trial ended, coach Anxi focused on interior defense and rebounding.
Under Akagi's intimidation, Tsukutake players often can only shoot from a distance.
Tsukutake's players have a good touch, but the wily coach Anzai doesn't think they can maintain such a good touch forever. When their touch is no longer hot, that's when the Shohoku team takes the lead.
During this period, Tsukutake's coach Kawasaki Kazumi saw Coach Anzai's plan. He also tried to disrupt Shohoku's rhythm and wanted to take advantage of the chaos.
Unfortunately, Coach Anzai knows Coach Kazumi Kawasaki very well, and under his planning, all Kazumi Kawasaki’s plans ended in failure.
Tsujiutake's inside line is still too 'soft' after all!
In the final analysis, this is also related to the fact that Coach Kazumi Kawasaki is a student of Coach Anzai, so it is reasonable to be beaten.
Soon after, Tsukutake no longer felt hot. Due to the disadvantage in rebounding, Shohoku firmly had the upper hand and began to continuously expand the point difference.
"Without high-quality insiders, it will be difficult for Tsujiutake to even enter the semi-finals of the county competition in the future."
Looking at the situation on the field, coach Kazumi Kawasaki sighed lightly.
It's just that high-quality insiders are hard to come by and have always been the most popular ones. The 'fish that slipped through the net' like Akagi and Ming Gaoguang are undoubtedly among the very few.
Even Uozumi was recruited by many teams when he graduated from junior high school. Just because he was the tallest in Kanagawa Junior High School, unlike Akagi Junior High School who was only about 190 centimeters just after graduating, the treatment was naturally different.
The rest of the game can be described as uneventful. Tsukutake tried to counterattack, but due to the huge rebound disadvantage, he was ultimately unable to recover and was defeated by the Shohoku team.
With the end of this game, it also means that the top four teams in the Kanagawa Prefecture competition have been released. They are Lingnan, Shoyang, Hainan and Shohoku.
After advancing to the joint finals, the focus became who would be Lingnan's first opponent.
For the other three teams, they all want to be Lingnan's first opponent. After all, such a rare opportunity may be difficult to see again in the future.
In their eyes, the Lingnan team during Yuzhu's suspension was a hot potato.
(End of chapter)
