Beep—!!
With the referee's whistle, the first half came to an end.
Led by Wu Yufei, and with the referees suddenly enforcing much stricter standards, Miuradai had turned the entire first half into a slow, choppy affair. Toyotama's players were driven to the brink of madness, their faces red with frustration, yet they could do nothing about it.
40:22. That was the score at the end of the first half, with Miuradai ahead and Toyotama behind.
Both teams had posted their lowest first-half scores since entering the National Tournament.
Toyotama's Three Musketeers had it the worst. Minami Retsu had scored just 9 points in the entire first half, while his two right-hand men had equally ugly numbers: Kishimoto had 6 points, and Itakura had 4.
In the past, any one of them could have scored more than the three of them combined today.
Yet today, they had all gone cold. Even the usually dependable Minami Retsu was no exception.
On Miuradai's side, Wu Yufei alone had reached double digits, putting up a game-high 18 points. Naito Tetsuya, Ishiyama Jun, and Murasame Kengo had 6 points apiece, while Ohno Kazuki had 4.
Under Wu Yufei's control, every offensive possession by both teams in the first half had averaged over 24 seconds.
Slowing the pace and suppressing the score were the first conditions for defeating Toyotama.
The second condition was rebounding.
Rebounds were the lifeline of the Run-and-Gun Offense. Without control of the boards in the paint, the Run-and-Gun Offense could not function properly.
One of the key reasons Toyotama had made such a name for itself in Osaka Prefecture high school basketball with its Run-and-Gun Offense was that Osaka simply had no powerful interior players.
When the mountain had no tiger, even monkeys could rule. Iwata Mitsuaki was, at best, a