Kainan's strange tactics

"Beep! That's the end of the first half." The referee blew the whistle to end the first half.

Only then did the exhausted Shohoku Team and Kainan Team players relax a little. Everyone was gasping for breath, and even Shinichi Maki showed signs of fatigue.

The score at the end of the first half was 58-46, with Shohoku Team holding a commanding twelve-point lead over Kainan Team.

As he watched Shohoku Team disappear into the Players' Tunnel, a somewhat ugly man in the stands wore a complicated expression.

He was Kengo Murasame, the Miuradai Captain whose team Shohoku Team had eliminated. Even after losing to Shohoku Team, Kengo Murasame still refused to accept it.

He thought Shohoku Team had merely been lucky. Besides, Kainan Team had eliminated Miuradai last year, so naturally, he had come to watch the game in person.

Today's Shohoku Team was completely different from the team that had played Miuradai that day. Their speed, rhythm, and pressure had all grown far stronger.

In other words, Shohoku Team had not gone all out that day.

When Shohoku truly fired on all cylinders, even Kainan was held down.

"They're incredible..." Kengo Murasame could not help voicing his admiration, his gaze fixed on Ryota Kudo's retreating back the entire time.

This first-year student, who was about the same height as him, really did strike Kengo Murasame as considerably better than himself.

Arrogant as he was, Kengo Murasame was finally convinced today.

Fortunately, he would be going to college next year, giving him two years without having to play basketball alongside Ryota Kudo.

"Let's go. There's nothing worth watching anymore. What a lousy Kainan team. They can't do anything right!" Kengo Murasame stood up with a disgruntled expression and dragged his teammates out of the gym.

When Ryota Kudo and the others entered Shohoku Team's locker room, they immediately saw Takenori Akagi sitting there, with Ayako applying ice to his ankle.

The moment he saw Ryota Kudo and the others, Takenori Akagi asked anxiously, "How did it go? What was the score at halftime?"

Kiminobu Kogure smiled and patted Takenori Akagi on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Akagi. We're leading Kainan by twelve!"

"Really?! That's great..." Takenori Akagi instantly felt as though his ankle did not hurt as much as before.

As a basketball player, Takenori Akagi naturally would not gamble with his health if they could win without him taking the court.

Unlike the relaxed atmosphere in Shohoku Team's locker room, the tension in Kainan Team's locker room was almost solid enough to touch.

Tadashi Muto even stood up in shame to apologize. "I'm sorry, Coach. I failed to defend Ryota Kudo properly..."

"It wasn't your fault, Muto. You already did very well. I was the one who failed to come up with a countermeasure in time." Coach Takato patted Tadashi Muto's shoulder reassuringly and motioned for him to sit down and rest.

Walking into the middle of the locker room, Coach Takato began laying out their tactics for the second half.

"Don't worry, everyone. A little difficulty like this won't bring Kainan down. In the second half, we'll do this..."

Meanwhile, all the reporters and the other teams in the gym were absolutely delighted.

They had never expected a Kanagawa semifinal to be this exciting.

And Kainan Team, one of last year's National Top Four, had fallen completely onto the back foot.

Quite a few reporters kept writing in their notebooks. It was easy to imagine that Shohoku Team would become a sensation once tomorrow's newspapers came out.

Under everyone's expectant gazes, the Kainan Team and Shohoku Team players returned to the court.

Takenori Akagi did not risk playing through his injury. Supported by Kiminobu Kogure, he took a seat on the Bench.

One thing was certain, though: if Shohoku fell into trouble, Takenori Akagi would absolutely risk taking the court without hesitation.

Strangely, Kainan Team's positioning after taking the court was rather odd. Tadashi Muto, their power forward, was not standing opposite Ryota Kudo.

Instead, Tadashi Muto stood not far from Hisashi Mitsui, his eyes fixed intently on him.

It looked as though Coach Takato's assignment for him was to shut Hisashi Mitsui down.

Hanamichi Sakuragi took the jump ball for Shohoku Team this time. Although he was three centimeters shorter than Kazuma Takasago, his jumping ability was far superior.

As the referee tossed the basketball into the air, Hanamichi Sakuragi leaped and easily won the jump ball.

The ball was passed to Ryota Miyagi, and the other four began running as hard as they could.

This time, the player guarding Ryota Kudo had actually switched back to Shinichi Maki, who forcefully engaged him in physical contact.

With Shinichi Maki clinging to him, Ryota Kudo naturally slowed down. He could not keep up with this fast break.

On the right side of the court, Hisashi Mitsui had barely reached the area beyond the three-point line when Tadashi Muto stuck to him like a stubborn plaster.

Even when Hisashi Mitsui made energy-wasting runs off the ball, Tadashi Muto followed his every step without fail.

"Damn it!" After running a circuit without finding an opening, a slightly breathless Hisashi Mitsui could only stop. He stared at Tadashi Muto, his face full of irritation.

Hisashi Mitsui had already had a difficult first half. Soichiro Jin's perimeter defense was not weak at all, leaving him with few good opportunities to shoot threes.

Now, in the second half, an even harder-working Tadashi Muto had switched onto him. At this rate, Hisashi Mitsui's numbers for this game would look terrible.

Ryota Kudo was having just as much trouble right now, constantly trying to shake off Shinichi Maki and receive a pass.

But Shinichi Maki stayed glued to Ryota Kudo with a stony expression, his powerful arm hooked around Ryota Kudo's waist the entire time.

"Referee, that's a foul!" On the sidelines, Kiminobu Kogure grew frantic at the sight. He stood up and protested loudly to the referee.

Seeing the two tangled together, the referee hesitated over whether to call a foul. This level of physical contact was a little excessive.

After hesitating for a while, the referee still lowered the whistle that had nearly reached his mouth. Although Shinichi Maki's defense was very physical, his movements were clean. This was not a foul.

If Shinichi Maki's defense were placed in twenty-first-century basketball, it would absolutely be a defensive foul, because offense was encouraged then, and NBA stars basically all benefited from "ticky-tack foul" calls.

But this was the nineties, an era when the NBA featured muscular collisions in the paint. Even someone as famous as Jordan, the God of Basketball, often received special treatment.

So Japanese high school basketball was the same at this time. Ordinary physical contact was encouraged, not shameful.

Ryota Kudo received the ball, and it eventually went to Kaede Rukawa for an isolation play. He forced a layup against Nobunaga Kiyota's defense, but the ball missed the rim, and Kazuma Takasago grabbed the rebound.

It was Kainan Team's turn to attack. The other players were behaving fairly normally, but Soichiro Jin alone seemed to have gone mad, beginning to run off the ball without sparing any effort.

His defender, Hisashi Mitsui, was soon shaken off. Shinichi Maki's pass immediately reached Soichiro Jin's hands, and he sank an open three-pointer.

Ryota Kudo looked at Kainan's Coach Takato in puzzlement. What kind of tactic was this?

No matter how good Soichiro Jin's stamina was, running like this would drain him in just a few possessions. Was he not going to play the rest of the game?

Perhaps Kainan was trailing by too many points, and Coach Takato wanted to go for broke. Ryota Kudo stopped dwelling on it. His top priority now was figuring out how to escape Shinichi Maki's defense.