Chương 23: Kyōsen Private Middle School VS Nada Middle School; 1st Half
「Nara Preliminaries, Day 2, Block A, Round 3: Semi Finals.」
In one of the courts, inside the Sika Deer Arena, two teams consisting of five players is lined up, facing each other at the centerline of the court. The former team have serious looks on their faces while the latter team is smirking at the former.
"Ya guys are the famous forever top 8 of this whole Kansai Region, huh?"
"Don't forget that they're chokers too!"
"Ha! Atleast they're number one at somethin'."
"Yep, number one at chokin'! Hahaha!"
"Hahaha! It's actually a miracle that they didn't choke during the quarter finals."
Everybody in the Nada Junior High's team suddenly started trash talking right when they lined up with Kyōsen. Everybody in their team sports a confident smile on their faces, seeming like they're pretty sure of their victory against Kyōsen today.
In Kyōsen team's side, Akagi and Kogure's faces darkened, the captain and vice captain of the team. Wakamatsu is gritting his teeth so hard that veins could be seen popping out of his temples, while Izuki and Seiji have ice cold expressions.
Just looking at their faces, you could tell that their opponents will not be going home in one peace today. They're all so eager to start the game now. Thankfully, the referee didn't make them wait any longer.
"The game between Kyōsen Junior High and Nada Junior High will now begin!"
""""Let's have a nice game!"""
While everybody on Kyōsen's team said that, deep inside their hearts, they swore to give them a very very 'nice' gaming experience that they'll never forget. No person in this team are pushovers. They'll definitely show this team how it feels like to play a game that you started off with a trash talk.
When the referee threw the ball into the air, Akagi, followed by Nada's center, jumped up for the tip off. Akagi purposefully jumped just a little near the opposition's center.
When he got his hands on the ball, Akagi turned his body mid air, facing his side of the body on the enemy center, and brought the ball down to his waist level with a lot of force. This made his body make contact with Nada's center, throwing him slightly off balance mid air.
If Akagi didn't control his strength, the opposition's center would have fallen on the ground at a very weird angle and break something. The opposition's center should thank him since he just ended up falling down to his butt after that bit of collision mid air.
"Seiji! Here, the ball!"
With a baseball pass, Akagi threw the ball towards Seiji who immediately breezed towards the other side of the court before throwing the ball haphazardly towards the rim. Nada players was just about to laugh at Seiji for sucking at shooting when they saw the 186cm frame of Wakamatsu shoot towards the ball before grabbing it, then slamming it down to the basket.
*BAM*
*creak*
*creak*
Wakamatsu slammed the ball so hard that the rim started emitting some slight creaking noises. Although slightly rattled by that two handed dunk of Wakamatsu, Nada Junior High didn't dwell on it that much as they continued with their game plan.
"We'll take that score back! It's just two points!"
Just as their point guard crossed the half court line, a blurry image of a hand tipped the ball right off his hand.
"Wha—! Who!?"
When Nada's point guard looked to his right, he saw Izuki right next to him, holding the ball on his hands. He wanted to snatch the ball back from Izuki but he didn't notice Izuki's eyes had slightly turned grayish before he passed the ball with a bounce pass towards his left.
"Hey!"
"I got it!"
When Seiji got his hands on the ball, he made a beeline towards the three point line. The point guard followed him and even got on his way for a moment. However, when he tried to block Seiji's way, Seiji brought him down to his knees with an ankle breaker before taking the shot for a three.
*swish*
When the shot sank in, the players of Nada Junior High finally realized that they're in deep sh*t right now. Unfortunately for them, there is no medicine for regret.
When they tried to attempt another play, this time inside the paint, Akagi rejected it with a flyswatter block, making the ball fly out of bounds.
※・※・※・※
During the 10 minutes of game time in the first quarter, Nada Junior High got the possession of the ball multiple times. During those ball possessions, they either got completely stopped, blocked by either an angered Wakamatsu or Akagi, or their ball got stolen by a sneaky steal, courtesy of the cool headed but angry Izuki or Seiji.
They never got the chance to score as their ball either goes flying out of bounds, gets stolen and converted to a two or three points play by the whole Kyōsen team, or miss their shots entirely. During just this single quarter, the whole Kyōsen team amassed a total of 7 steals and 5 blocks from the crumbling Nada Junior High, resulting in a shocking 100% turnover rate and a 0% field goal percentage from their 20 or so shot attempts.
There was even a moment when Seiji blocked the three point attempt of the shooting guard from Nada. He blocked it so masterfully that he even angled his wrist so that the ball would bounce back and hit the shooting guard right on his face.
The referee didn't call a foul since, after watching the replay, it was deemed as an accident by them. Nada's shooting guard, of course, insists that it was a foul but he got completely ignored by the referee who just shook his head in annoyance.
Meanwhile, in Kyōsen's side, they got a total of 26 shot attempts from this quarter alone. Kogure and Izuki missed a total of five shots due to it being a contested shot while they sank in two three point shots each. The remaining three out of seven shots that they took from beyond the arc came from Seiji, who sank all of them in.
By the end of the first quarter, Nada Junior High no longer had that smirk that was written all over their faces at the start of the match. They wore a despondent look on their face as they fixed their gaze at the scoreboard that says, 43-0.
"We're definitely screwed this game, right?"
"Ah… We definitely awakened something we shouldn't have."
※・※・※・※
In Kyōsen's bench, all the remaining players looked at the starting five, especially Seiji, with a look of surprise. During this match, they, along with everyone on the audience seat, was surprised when each and everyone of these five players suddenly exploded and started to rack in some crazy amount of points.
These people didn't even have time to cheer for their players as they looked on in amazement at the crazy spectacle they witnessed. No one expected that Kyōsen would come to the court and stomp their opponents so hard that they didn't even let them score. Only Chu Lin, one of the few people who heard the conversation that took place between the players when they lined up, showed a look of approval.
'Even though they're definitely angered by the players of Nada, they still heeded my advice about not showing all of their cards if it's not necessary.'
After taking a glance at his players, he locked his gaze onto the player who scored the most this quarter, Seiji.
'His score is almost half of the entire team's score this quarter, only shy of one point. His stats are… hmm… let me see… 21 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 4 steals, and 2 blocks. If he keeps going at this rate, he'll probably score over a hundred points.'
While stroking his mustache, Chu Lin paused momentarily before lowering his head for a moment, trying to hide the smile that's threatening to form on his face.
'This youngster is definitely one of those monsters.'
With the sound of the buzzer, Chu Lin's thoughts were interrupted. He didn't do any of the coaching stuff this time because he knows that the whole team is stronger than they are ever before. If anything, he had to thank the players of Nada for awakening these young lads on his team.
Everyone on the bench didn't say anything as they just watched how the five players stood up and silently walked up to the court with serious looks on their faces. It looks like Nada Junior High will once again go through some serious thrashing.
※・※・※・※
Coming off the slight break in between quarters, Kyōsen went into their positions still with the serious look in their faces. Seeing this, the players from Nada felt a shiver run down their spine.
Sure enough, when the match started and Nada inbounded the ball before crossing the half court line, they felt an enormous amount of pressure like never before from Kyōsen. It took the point guard of their team a few seconds before he could wake up from his shock. When he did, he tried to pass the ball to their center but it was immediately intercepted by Seiji.
"Shoot! Stop him! We need to stop him this time!"
Because of the point guard's close to hysterical shouts, all four players who are still dazed a moment ago woke up and ran after Seiji like their life depended on it. Unfortunately, they just couldn't stop Seiji.
Seiji took the ball from coast to coast while crossing two of the Nada players. He then did a hesitation dribble before passing through the center. Then, he finished it off with a left handed layup after the power forward tried to block his right side.
Just when Nada thought that they already saw everything that Seiji can do, they once again went to hell and back and back to hell. Seiji took them for a ride as suddenly, midway through the quarter, he took the position of the guard from Izuki.
When no one is defending him from beyond the arc, he'll casually pull up for a three point shot that looks like it would always go in. When someone did try to mark him, he'll just casually generate a score off the dribble or pass the ball to an open teammate.
Whenever he drives through the paint and attempt to score there, the defender would be confused as to when and which direction would he jump. Since Seiji could jump using both of his feet and is totally ambidextrous, the arrays of moves he could do to get the ball through that hoop was numerous.
It would be good for Nada if he was the only one who's scoring. However, to the players of Nada's despair, everyone in Kyōsen is contributing. When they tried to double or triple team Seiji, he would just casually pass the ball towards Wakamatsu or Akagi for an easy dunk or layup, or he would kick the ball towards Izuki and Kogure for an open look three. They literally couldn't do anything.
With the entire Kyōsen roster missing only a few of their shots, these misses coming from Wakamatsu and Kogure, Kyōsen Junior High scored a grand total of 54 points this quarter. Their efficiency is at an all time high as they only missed two shots, courtesy of Seiji who passed the ball towards them at an extremely timed manner.
The score between the two teams by the end of the first half was 97-9.
※・※・※・※
「Arisugawa Seiji's Stats」
(52 points, 12 rebounds, 9 assists, 4 blocks, and 7 steals)
[A/N¹: Man, I totally did some calculations for this chapter. I averaged this fast pace game to a 15 secs per possession. This resulted in a total of 40 possessions per quarter. I wanted to average it at around 10 to 13 but that's just too fast pace since Nada is playing the slow game. Anyway, with this kind of fast pace, everyone on his team would definitely get tired except for Seiji so I took that into account and pumped up his rebounds a bit and his shot attempts. This came to a staggering 31 pts game in just one quarter.]
[A/N²: I had some fun thinking about ways to screw over this Nada team. I wanted a trash talking team that would eventually get thrashed by Kyōsen so here they are. I'm literally just writing what I wanted to read, right? Well, never mind. It's much better to write what I wanted to read since my productivity rises when that happens.]
[A/N³: Hope you guys enjoyed this first half of the match. Next chapter, I'll be a bit more descriptive instead of just writing some action tidbits. Don't expect too much though. I'm still green when it comes to writing basketball related stuffs.]
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