Prelims, Semi-Finals (Focus: Hyakuzawa)

Round-3 of Block-A was over, and Tokiwadai Middle School continued Day-3 of Tokyo Preliminaries by advancing to the semi-finals held on the same day.

The first semi-final for Block-A was between Tokiwadai Middle School and Samezuka Middle School. Samezuka had crossed paths in Round-3 of last year's preliminaries, and they had tried to tire out Tokiwadai players for their semi-finals.

Samezuka was a school with good basics and had players over average height. The school had a good culture and environment for development and was one of the more consistent schools in Tokyo. If you removed Tokiwadai and Teiko from Tokyo schools, they would be legitimate contenders for a spot in the finals.

But unfortunately, they met Tokiwadai Middle School.

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Samezuka's players looked at Tokiwadai's warmup, and most of their eyes were gathered at one player. If you asked people who watched Tokiwadai, then they would tell that one player attracted their eyes to them, and surprisingly it wasn't Kageyama Shun. The player who gathered eyes to him was Hyakuzawa Yudai, the center of Tokiwadai and the second tallest player in Tokyo Preliminaries, only shorter than Teiko's Murasakibara Atsushi.

Samezuka's point guard looked at Teiko's Hyakuzawa, laying up the ball into the basket and uttered.

Samezuka's PG: "He is tall..."

Samezuka's power forward nodded his head and provided his teammate with Hyakuzawa's height in numbers.

Samezuka's PF: "194 cm. Tokiwadai's center is 194 cm tall."

Samezuka's player followed Hyakuzawa with their eyes, blankly watching him while they tried to wrap their heads around the fact that they were about to against a team with a center that was that tall.

Samezuka's team was about to know how much advantage was height in the sport of basketball.

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The game started with the regulation tip-off for the first possession of the game. Samezuka's center and Hyakuzawa stood in the center with all other players surrounding them. While Hyakuzawa had his eyes trained on the ball in the referee's hand, Samezuka's center was looking at Hyakuzawa and was feeling worried about if he would be able to compete with Hyakuzawa.

He was snapped out of his worry when the referee told them to get ready for the tip-off. Both centers bent their knees for the jump, the referee held the ball at his head level and threw it above for the two jumpers. Between the focused Hyakuzawa and the distracted Samezuka center, it was clear who got to the ball first.

Hyakuzawa got to the ball first, and maybe it was because he had hyped himself for the game, or perhaps it was just a simple mistake, but he smacked the ball a tad bit harder. Shun's eyebrows crossed his hairline as he ran towards the flying ball, and had to cross into the three-point arc to get the ball.

While Shun chased the ball, the rest of Tokiwadai moved forward and got into position. Kaitani looked towards Hyakuzawa and laughed at him.

Kaitani: "Ease up, big guy. We are not playing volleyball, you don't need to smack the ball that hard."

Hyakuzawa groaned but didn't reply as he saw Shun crossing the half-court line and focused back on the game.

Shun brought the ball inside the three-point arc, performed a spin move to evade his defender, and immediately passed the ball straight to Hyakuzawa in the low-post, who caught the ball and went to the rim with authority. Hyakuzawa started the game with a dunk to compensate for his tip-off mishap.

Samezuka's center wasn't even able to attempt a block against Hyakuzawa because of the well-placed pass and Hyakuzawa's energy under the rim. The semi-finals between Tokiwadai and Samezuka started with a bang as the spectators, which primarily consisted of other school players 'ooh-ed' at Hyakuzawa's dunk.

Shun clapped his hands above his head, as he and the rest of him team fell back for defense, he pointed at Hyakuzawa and called out to him.

Shun: "Hyakuzawa, keep hooping like that. I like the energy, keep it up."

Hyakuzawa nodded, feeling that he had redeemed himself from his earlier miss.

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Hyakuzawa did indeed played with the same intensity and energy for the rest of the game. He became an enormous threat to Samezuka on both sides of the court. Samezuka's members experienced how much a tall center like Hyakuzawa could hinder a team's offense.

Samezuka's point guard had just passed the ball to the small forward, who was in front of the free-throw line, and the small forward relayed it to the shooting guard, who stood free at the corner of the three-point arc. Samezuka's shooting guard got into shooting motion and shot the ball to the basket, but missed the center, and the ball bounced off the rim.

Samezuka's center and power forward looked at each other for a split second and nodded, then focused on the ball and got back to rebounding. Samezuka's power forward aggressively boxed out Yuki and immediately followed with a jump to the ball, his center, teammate also jumped for the ball. Just when both of them thought they had no opposition, two hands came from between the two, splitting the two away and firmly grab the ball before them.

Samezuka's center looked at the owner of the hands and saw Hyakuzawa with a focused expression on his face. He didn't have any time to think as he and the power forward were pushed aside by Hyakuawa's body. The power forward even messed his landing and stumbled to the ground.

Samezuka' PF: "Ugh!"

Samezuka's small forward's eye narrowed as he saw Hyakuzawa grab the ball and yelled out to his teammates.

Samezuka's SF: "Defensive Rebound! Hurry, fall back!"

Hyakuzawa dribbled the ball towards the basket and passed the ball just when he reached the half-court, the pass went to Shun, who immediately relayed it to Sora, who had gotten near the basket in a fast, single-bounce pass. The little second-year guard caught the ball and laid it in for an easy bucket.

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Seeing Hyakuzawa's performance, the coach decided to switch out Kaitani with Narumiya and ordered Sora and Narumiya too shot as many threes as they liked.

Narumiya got around his defender with the held of a screen by Yuki and shot a three-point jumper right from the corner of the three-point arc. The ball swished around the rim and fell out instead of falling in.

Six players gathered under the basket for the rebound, they boxed each other out and used their arms to bar each other out, and at the same time, waited for the ball to bounce and reach out for it. But, from all these players, the tallest prevailed as he leaped higher and faster than everyone to firmly grasp the ball in his hands.

Hyakuzawa looked around to assess his situation.

Hyakuzawa: 'I can't score on my own, too many people.'

Hyakuzawa's eyes caught Shun, sidestepping into his line of vision, and he immediately passed the ball to him from within the encirclement of Samezuka's players trying to snatch the ball away from him. Shun caught the pass from the inside and passed it along to the other second-year shooter.

Shun: "Sora, shoot!"

Sora caught the ball near the center of the three-point arc, the right side from the top of the key. He took a second to gather himself and shot the ball. This time the shot didn't miss and sank in seamlessly.

As Hyakuzawa moved to defense, he was double high-fived by Shun and Yuki. Yuki patted him on the back and praised.

Yuki: "The jump earlier was well-timed."

Shun nodded and added to Yuki's praise.

Shun: "You boxed out the center well, keep on getting rebounds. The coach wants to see more of the second-year. We need to set both of them up."

Hyakuzawa looked at Shun and asked.

Hyakuzawa: "How do you want to set up the play for them?"

Shun thought about it for a moment and pulled out Sora and Narumiya's information from his head. He thought about how both of his juniors played and built to efficient tactics to get them the ball in his head and then crossed matched them with the pass-routines that the team had practiced. He looked up at his year mates and started.

Shun: "Narumiya is more of a spot-up shooter, so he will get to a free space and shoot the ball from there, so I want you guys to set off-the-ball screens for him. Help Narumiya walk away from his defender before he gets the ball.

Sora, on the other hand, likes to have the ball in his hands before getting into his position, so on-the-ball screens for him. If he gets the ball, screen for him."

He looked at Hyakuzawa and spoke to his center.

Shun: "Get ready for rebounds, they are going to attempt a lot of shots, and in turn, miss a lot of them with how much the coach insisted them to take shots."

Hyakuzawa silently nodded, and the conversation ended. The three third-years returned back to their positions, ready to defend.

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Samezuka's center felt frustrated with his performance under the post. He had been loosing about seventy-five percent of the rebounds to Hyakuzawa. He tried his hardest, but his taller counterpart was just better at rebounding.

He currently had the ball and moved towards the basket for a score. He jumped for a layup, but before the ball left his hand, another hand came and snatched the ball away from him. He looked behind to see Hyakuzawa looming behind him. When he got to the floor, he also heard someone yelling from Tokiwadai's bench.

Kaitani: "Yeah! That's how you do it. Get that weak-ass attempt out of here."

He grunted in frustration as he chased after Tokiwadai's player, who moved towards the basket for the offense. He saw the ball move around the players, but it ultimately came back to Hyakuzawa, who moved to under the rim for a layup. He charged towards Hyakuzawa, fully intending to stop Hyakuzawa, even if he ended up fouling him, which he indeed did.

He stomped towards Hyakuzawa and looped his arm around Hyakuzawa, trying to stop him from scoring.

Samezuka' C: 'He isn't good at free-throws. He will miss them.'

With that thinking, he full-heartedly fouled Hyakuzawa. It wasn't an unusual strategy and was even a smart move considering that Tokiwadai was already fifteen points up. But, unfortunately, the reason behind fouling wasn't for the team but a way of venting some anger. Alas, things didn't go in favor of Samezuka's center as Hyakuzawa somehow managed to lay the ball in even with his arm being hindered.

Samezuka's center gaped when he saw the ball drop in the basket, and then he heard the referee's whistle announcing the foul. From another place, he heard.

Shun: "And one. Hyakuzawa, good hustle."

He turned his head just in time to hear Hyakuzawa's reply.

Hyakuzawa: "Ah, it was pure luck that the ball went in."

Samezuka's absent-mindedly went to the rebound setup for the free-throw, praying that he hadn't given Tokiwadai a chance for a three-point play.

Samezuka's C: 'He isn't good at free-throws. He will surely miss, right?'

He looked at Hyakuzawa, who received the ball from the referee, and took his time before shooting the ball, which missed because of Hyakuzawa's poor shooting skills. Samezuka's center rejoiced in his heart that the shot missed, but his smile faded when he saw a flash of silver jumping and jamming the ball into the basket. His jaw dropped at the dunk, and the reality crashed into him as he heard Kageyama Shun cheerfully announce as he high-fived Hyakuzawa.

Shun: "Let's go! A four-point play! And, that was my first score of the tournament."

Samezuka's center was thinking the worst outcome would be a three-point play, but it exceeded his expectations and Tokiwadai exited the play with four points under their belt.

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Samezuka players saw as they saw the Tokiwadai team enter the court without their captain, but they didn't feel any better. Kageyama Shun had only scored two points in the game, and Tokiwadai still ended up with a twenty-five point lead, and they still had a full quarter to play.

Hyakuzawa, in the absence of Shun, played aggressively on defense, as they needed to keep up the defensive quality that Shun was providing the team from the start of this season. He rushed to rebounds, screens, and even started to score more aggressively from the momentum he was picking.

By the end of the game, Samezuka lost the game by forty-four points. The finals score of the game was 64-20 in Tokiwadai's favor.

Tokiwadai Middle School proceeded to the finals of Block-A, where they would face the last year's representatives Shoei Middle School for a seat in the Nationals.