Chapter 18 : Evaluation

A day later, Furihata found himself along with his teammates sitting down on Seirin's court, waiting for Riko to give the evaluation for the last game. After that, they all could enjoy their day off after a very long and hard game.

He could see Hyuga and Izuki yawn, couldn't hide their tiredness. On the other side, Kagami didn't even show his shy side as he fell asleep on the floor, and to what Kawahara said, Kagami also did that during the class.

"Well, this is our first game this year, and the intensity was very high," Furihata muttered, trying to justify this condition to himself.

A minute later, Riko arrived at the court, clapping loudly to wake up all of them who fell asleep.

"Okay, guys! I know you are tired. So, let's do it fast! Here is the scoresheet of the game that I received from Kaijo's official team and I have already copied it for all of you. Take a look."

Furihata took one of the papers Riko shared and read,

-----SEIRIN BASKETBALL TEAM---------

Shun Izuki (PG) : 12 pts, 6 asts, 3 rbs, 2 stls, 3 TOVs, 4/10 FGs, 0/4 3PTs, 4/6 FTs, 2 Fls, 24:16

Junpei Hyuga (SG) : 26 pts, 2 asts, 2 rbs, 2 TOVs, 9/14 FGs, 8/12 3PTs, 2 Fls 31:41

Tetsuya Kuroko (SF) : 0 pts, 11 asts, 3 rbs, 5 stls 20:08

Taiga Kagami (PF) : 37 pts, 1 asts, 13 rbs, 2 blks, 5 TOVs, 13/27 FGs, 1/1 3PTs, 10/10 FTs, 4 Fls 35:52

Rinnosuke Mitobe (C) : 10 pts, 1 asts, 7 rbs, 1 blks, 5/5 pts, 3 Fls 18:10

Kouki Furihata : 24 pts, 10 asts, 3 rbs, 4 stls, 2 blks, 1 TOVs, 8/10 FGs, 6/7 3PTs, 2/2 FTs 26:33

Shinji Koganei : 8 pts, 0 asts, 3 rbs, 3 TOVs, 3/8 FGs, 2/2 3PTs, 3 Fls 12:31

Satoshi Tsuchida : 9 pts, 0 asts, 7 rbs, 5 blks, 1 TOVs, 4/7 FGs, 1/1 3PTs, 2 Fls 17:44

-----------------------------------------------------

Furihata nodded, satisfied with his statistics. He could see that all of them who played yesterday also feel the same.

After spending five minutes in silence, with all the players reading the scoresheet, Riko finally stood and spoke out,

"Okay, guys! You can read it later and probably save it as a souvenir from the last game. But for now, let's talk about the game."

All of them straightened their back, ready for the evaluation session.

"Okay, any of you want to say it first?" Riko looks at them expectantly. Unsurprisingly, Izuki is the first one who raised his hand.

"Yes, Izuki?"

"We were out of shape." The point guard spoke. "I noticed that yesterday, the only one who could hold his own against Kaijo for the entire game is Kagami-kun. Almost all of us couldn't survive the very high-intensity game. I think it was just pure luck that we could win the game yesterday."

"Thank you, Izuki." Riko replied immediately before Kagami could refute Izuki's comment about luck. "What Izuki said is indeed true. Our physical condition is way too poor. Last year, we also suffered from the same problem. Fortunately for us, unlike last year, now we have dependable bench players, so our solution is clear. We will spend more time in physical training to get you ready for the interhigh. I hope you prepare yourself."

All the players gulped nervously at the dark aura that radiated from Riko.

"Anyway, anything else, Izuki?"

"N-Nothing, Riko-chan. P-Please move on to the next issue." Riko pondered for a moment before nodding and smiling sweetly, scaring Izuki to hell.

"Sure!" She replied with a high tone. "But when we are on the court, call me coach, okay? Otherwise…"

"H-HAI!"

"Good." Riko turned around, ignoring a sigh of relief from Izuki. "Anyone else wants to speak their mind?" Hyuga raised his hand.

"Yes, Junpei?"

"I don't want to speak about our weakness. Instead, I want to address our strength yesterday. Our offense improved a lot since the first year joined our team. Besides Kise, Kagami-kun could dominate everyone from Kaijo just by his strength. And the addition of Furihata-kun and Kuroko-kun also gives us more options on the offense."

"You are right." Riko nodded, ignoring the grumbling sound of Kagami at the mention of Kise. "Our offense is much more versatile now. Not only the combination between Kagami-kun and Kuroko-kun, but the three-point combination between you and Furihata-kun could also become lethal here. We could incorporate a lot of attacking strategies that we couldn't do last year this time."

She paused her speech, letting her words sink into her player's minds.

"Okay, anything else? Yes, Furihata-kun?" She pointed her finger at Furihata who raised his hand.

"While our offense is good, our defense however needs a lot of work to fix. If we face a dominant player like Kise, there is small chance we could win the game like yesterday. Hear me out first." He raised his hand, stopping the protest that almost come from Kagami.

" I know we won the game, but we couldn't stop Kise completely yesterday, even with all Red's effort. Just look at Kise's final statistics."

Ryota Kise : 45 Pts, 11 rbs, 3 asts, 4 blks, 2 stls, 3 TOVs, 17/20 FGs, 4/4 3PTs, 7/7 FTs, 1 Fls, 35:17

"Kise only missed three shots, and I remember two of them were because of me and the third one was on the last play. His three turnovers were basically the combined effort of Red and Phantom for almost all the time they guarded Blondie. However, when Phantom is on the bench, Red couldn't even stop him even once. Against the team with a dominant player like him, we would be in a lot of trouble in the future."

All the players who played the game nodded solemnly, seeing the problem clearly.

"I don't get it." Fukuda spoke. "We won the game, right? Even though Kise scored 45 points, we were still able to freeze the other players. Why is it that the defense would be our problem?"

"It is because they are still experimenting with their team," Izuki replied, getting nods from Furihata and Riko. "Yesterday was the first game Kise played for them, so they wanted to figure out how to incorporate him into the team. That is why their coach gave Kise full freedom to do whatever he wanted, and if not for the last play, we would definitely lose against this experimental team. If his teammates are more involved in the game, we were screwed."

"Good observation as always, Izuki." Riko praised the point guard before turning around and seeing the grim atmosphere around her team.

"Hey, why is it that all of you suddenly have that long face and didn't say anything?" Seeing nobody answers, she clicked her tongue, thinking of a way to improve her team's mood.

"Is there an easy way to solve this problem?" Kagami suddenly spoke, gaining the attention of his teammates. "If our physical and defense are the problems, we should just focus our training on their aspect, right? You all are way too focused on finding what is wrong in the game yesterday, and you forget that we won the game! It doesn't matter if they used their second team, experiment team, or whatever you said. The fact still standing, we win the game! Is that enough reason to celebrate?"

Their face brightened a bit at what Kagami said.

"He is right, you know?" Riko added quickly, taking advantage of the positive momentum that Kagami just build. "We know what we lack, and it could be solved with training. As for Kaijo, let's not think about them right now. We are not in the same prefecture, so it would be a long time before we face them again. For now, let's celebrate our win against them! Let's go for a yakiniku party!"

"YEAAAH!!"

Furihata could only shake his head as the grim atmosphere suddenly lifted up from the gym.

'Yeah, that's right. Sometimes, not overthinking and keeping it simple is the best way to life, indeed.'

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Author note:

Short chapter!

The next two chapters would not have any basketball in it. Instead, I inserted the daily slice of lice from the MC to have some fun. This story is a bit slow-paced, I hope you can bear with me.

Also, If you want to support me more, you can visit my Patreon page on patreon(.)com/ZetaFaes

You can also read this fanfiction up to chapter 32 on that page. Thank you! :)