The game officially began.
Sendoh posted up, then sank a smooth turnaround jumper!
75-78!
Kaede Rukawa burst past his defender like lightning and answered with a difficult double-clutch layup!
77-78!
Sendoh used a screen and pulled up for three. Nothing but net!
77-81!
Refusing to back down, Kaede Rukawa forced in an answering three!
80-81!
Sendoh took Rukawa one-on-one again and hit a pull-up midrange jumper!
80-83!
Kaede Rukawa drew a foul from Ikegami on offense and made both free throws!
82-83!
The two sides traded blows, wasting not a single possession.
Every basket drew thunderous cries of astonishment, and every exchange on offense and defense was suffocating.
In the light of their brilliance, the other players seemed to have become mere background figures.
This display of individual heroics at its finest brought the game to its climax.
The final thirty-five seconds.
Ryonan called a timeout.
Coach Taoka looked grave as he quickly laid out the play. "For this last possession, run down the clock and try to score! If it doesn't go in, give everything on defense! Sendoh, this possession is yours!"
After the timeout, Ryonan inbounded in the frontcourt.
Akira Sendoh curled around Uozumi's solid screen to receive the ball, with Kaede Rukawa shadowing him.
Sendoh controlled the ball steadily beyond the three-point line, burning time.
The clock reached the final eighteen seconds!
Sendoh made his move!
He dribbled repeatedly between his legs, changing his rhythm, then suddenly made a sweeping crossover. Kaede Rukawa went all out to cut him off.
But Sendoh used a convincing shot fake to pull Kaede Rukawa off balance.
This time, however, Kaede Rukawa did not bite completely. Though off balance, he still fought to maintain his defensive position.
At that moment, Sendoh made a startling choice.
He neither forced a shot nor passed, but dribbled one step backward to create a little space.
After retreating beyond the three-point line, he ignored the interference of Kaede Rukawa's long arm and pulled straight up for a jumper!
The basketball traced an extraordinarily high arc as the entire gym watched-
"Swish!"
Nothing but net!
82-86!
Only 10.8 seconds remained!
"Damn it!"
Kaede Rukawa's heart gave a violent jolt.
Shohoku called an emergency timeout.
Coach Anzai set up the final possession with a clear objective: a quick two or an attempt at a three.
Yet the gears of fate began turning wildly in Ryonan's favor, in favor of the red-hot Akira Sendoh!
Shohoku inbounded from the sideline.
Under immense pressure, Kiminobu Kogure made his intended pass far too obvious. The alert Ryoji Ikegami read its path and lunged to knock the ball out of bounds.
Shohoku had only five seconds left to attack!
Another sideline inbound.
Satoru Kakuta received the ball. Flustered by Ikegami's tight pressure, he tripped over his own feet while turning with his dribble and committed a fatal turnover, losing the ball out of bounds.
Ryonan's ball.
Only 2.1 seconds remained!
After receiving the basketball, Sendoh did not hesitate at all. From just beyond the halfway line, he launched an ultra-long-range three.
The basketball flew through the air as the final whistle sounded!
Swish!!!
He beat the buzzer!
82-89!
The shot went in! The game was over!
82-89!
Ryonan won by seven points.
The entire gym fell into deathly silence before Ryonan's bench erupted in wild cheers.
A miracle!
No, an act of god!
In the final forty seconds, Akira Sendoh had single-handedly scored all six of Ryonan's last points.
They included a lethal step-back three and an ultra-long-range buzzer-beating three.
Through his strength alone, he had utterly destroyed Shohoku's hopes of a comeback!
Akira Sendoh stood where he was, breathing lightly, that same languid, confident smile still on his face, as though everything he had just done had been effortless.
But everyone knew just how terrifying a performance he had delivered.
Shohoku's players stood frozen, unable to accept this sudden collapse.
Kaede Rukawa braced his hands on his knees, sweat dripping like rain, his face filled with frustration and shock.
Takenori Akagi looked up and let out a long sigh.
Kogure and Kakuta's faces were full of guilt.
Coach Taoka pumped his fists excitedly.
Coach Anzai, meanwhile, adjusted his glasses and gazed deeply at Akira Sendoh, who was surrounded by his teammates.
Then he looked at the young players under his command, who had just undergone this brutal baptism.
This heart-stopping practice game had finally ended in Ryonan's victory.
But the superstar dominance Akira Sendoh had displayed in the final moments.
And the problems Shohoku had exposed, along with the enormous potential it possessed.
All of it filled everyone with boundless anticipation for the coming prefectural tournament.
Ryonan's bus traveled along the road back to school, its interior filled with the joy and clamor of victory.
The players were still excitedly discussing Sendoh's miraculous performance in the closing moments.
"Sendoh! That last half-court three was godlike! That's the sort of thing you only see in manga!"
His face full of admiration, Hikoichi Aida spoke excitedly to Akira Sendoh, who was sitting near the front.
Sendoh leaned against the window, wearing his usual languid smile. "Just good luck."
His tone was relaxed, as though that astonishing, game-deciding shot had merely been something he had tossed up for fun.
Sitting beside Sendoh, Coach Moichi Taoka folded his arms and watched the street scenery race past outside the window.
Yet there was little joy on his face. Instead, it carried a trace of gravity that would not fade.
Victory was certainly worth celebrating, but as an experienced coach, he cared more about the details of the game that merited deeper thought.
"Hikoichi."
Coach Taoka suddenly spoke.
His voice was not loud, but it quieted the noise inside the bus a little.
"Yes, Coach!"
Hikoichi Aida immediately sat up straight.
"In the closing moments, Coach Anzai took Shohoku's number fifteen off the court-that rookie named Kawamoto Kazuki. What do you make of that?"
Coach Taoka turned his head and fixed Hikoichi with a sharp look.
"Huh?"
Hikoichi Aida froze for a moment and scratched his head. "Well... maybe because they needed to catch up at the end, Coach Anzai trusted the experience of third-year Kogure and second-year Kakuta more."
"Experience?"
Coach Taoka scoffed and shook his head. "You saw how Kogure and Kakuta performed in the final forty seconds. Consecutive turnovers handed the game away outright. If he'd kept number fifteen on, with the composure and ability he showed, the result might have been different."
He paused, his brows tightly knitted, seeming both to mutter to himself and to question Hikoichi. "That old fox Mitsuyoshi Anzai... what exactly was he thinking? Shohoku's offense and defense clearly ran more smoothly with number fifteen on the court, yet in the closing moments, he put in a visibly nervous, turnover-prone lineup... it doesn't make sense."
"Coach, do you mean..."
Hikoichi Aida was somewhat puzzled.
"Let me see the stat sheet."
Coach Taoka held out his hand.
Hikoichi hurriedly passed it over.
Coach Taoka turned straight to Shohoku's statistics page, his gaze locking precisely onto the row for number fifteen, Kawamoto Kazuki.
"Points... five."
Coach Taoka read in a low voice, tapping the number with his finger. "One three-pointer, one layup. Four rebounds, two offensive and two defensive. Assists... two. Steals... one. Blocks... zero. Turnovers... zero."
He looked it over several times. The numbers really were unremarkable.
They were merely those of an ordinary rotation player, even a little meager.
"Only five points..." Coach Taoka leaned back in his seat, sinking into thought. "His defensive numbers were ordinary too... looking at this, there really doesn't seem to be anything special about him."
He rubbed his chin, trying to find a reasonable explanation for Coach Anzai's seemingly muddleheaded substitution.
"Could it be..."
Coach Taoka seemed to have found an answer, a hint of speculation in his tone. "Because Kawamoto Kazuki is a first-year rookie, after all, was Anzai worried he couldn't withstand the pressure in the final decisive moments and would make an even more fatal mistake than Kogure or Kakuta? So he preferred relatively steady upperclassmen with limited ability rather than risk using a rookie?"
The more he thought about it, the more reasonable this explanation seemed. After all, the psychological pressure in the closing moments was immense, and rookies failing to perform under it was common.
"Hmm... that seems to be the only possibility."
Coach Taoka finally reached his conclusion and let out a soft breath, as though he had untangled a knot in his heart.
He glanced once more at Kawamoto Kazuki's inconspicuous statistics, then put him out of his mind.
A rookie averaging five points a game, with an extremely unstable mentality to boot.
He was not yet worth spending too much effort watching.
Shohoku's true threats this year were still the astonishingly explosive Kaede Rukawa and Hanamichi Sakuragi, whose potential was limitless.
"Anzai is still too conservative."
Coach Taoka summed it up quietly, the faintest trace of a smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.
If Shohoku tied its own hands because of its coach's conservatism, that was naturally good news for Ryonan.
He handed the stat sheet back to Hikoichi Aida and turned his gaze toward the window again.
The bus continued onward. Coach Taoka's thoughts had already drifted to the approaching prefectural tournament, considering how to deal with truly formidable opponents such as Kainan and Shoyo.
He had no idea whatsoever what truth lay hidden behind those seemingly ordinary statistics.
That number fifteen, Kawamoto Kazuki, whom he had so casually labeled a rookie unable to withstand pressure...
What vast landscapes spanning eternity lay within his heart.