Preliminaries, Here I come!

The preliminaries in Tokyo had two blocks, so the schedule regarding matches was a little different, and the preliminaries went a little longer than preliminaries in other prefectures.

The schedule in Tokyo for this year was.

Day 1: Block A; Round 1 and Round 2. (Seeded teams enter in Round 2)

Day 2: Block B; Round 1 and Round 2. (Seeded teams enter in Round 2)

Day 3: Block A; Round 3 and Semifinals.

Day 4: Block B; Round 4 and Semifinals.

Day 5: Rest Day.

Day 6: Finals for both Blocks.

Tokiwadai Middle School was part of Block A while, Teiko Middle School was part of Block B.

Shoei Middle School, the number four middle school in Japan, was also part of Block A and seeded. If they keep on winning, they would have to face Tokiwidai Middle School in the final if the later can reach the finals.

When Shun looked at the bracket for Block A and saw that he would play against Kiyoshi Teppei in the finals, and was extremely happy even though he was a little disappointed that he won't be able to face Teiko in the preliminaries.

Tokyo Metropolitan Arena hosted the Tokyo preliminaries every year. The crowd for the games was usually just parents, classmates from school, or the few hardcore fans who liked watching Middle School level basketball.

In Japan, basketball was the most famous at the high school and college levels, and middle school players laked the skill or the physique to play at an enjoyable enough level for people to watch.

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

(Day 1 on the Tokyo Preliminaries.)

Tokiwadai Middle School basketball team entered the Tokyo Metropolitan Arena and immediately drew many eyes towards them.

Tokiwadai Basketball Club had three-strings, which meant that there were many members, and most of them came to support and cheer on for their first-string team.

They wore purple and black tracksuits, and their large number was intimidating to watch.

Combine it with them being the reigning National champions; their presence was extremely prominent.

They had arrived in the middle of Round 1 games. First-string starters and reserve players went to the locker room while the rest of the club proceeded to the gallery of their assigned court.

Shun followed them after the coach's short briefing.

Their first match was against the winner of the Round 1 game between Iwatobi Middle School and Samezuka Academy.

[A/N: The school names are from the series, Free; It is an anime about swimming. I have not seen it but knew that it is a sports anime, so I went to their wiki fandom site and picked the school names from there.]

From the looks of the game, Iwatobi Middle School was winning with a comfortable margin and was fifteen points ahead. Fifteen points were a lot considering that middle school games had lower point average.

Shun looked at the pamphlet that contained the names, position, and height of all the players from every team. These pamphlets were issued so that the viewers could find out the names of the players they liked and then looked at the game.

Shun: 'Iwatobi and Samezuka; none of the two teams have any tall players. Their speed or skills are nothing impressive, but Iwatobi has the advantage because they successfully gained the momentum from the start of the match and rode it to the second half.

I am pretty sure we could win against both of them even if the coach decided to play with the second-string team, but well, that won't happen.'

Shun decided that the upcoming game, he would play defensively. His seniors and teammates had more than enough firepower to be ahead of them in terms of scoring, and if he tightened up on defense, they would never lose the upper hand.

Shun knew that high scoring games were overall more exciting, but he also knew that the crowd cheered the most when a scoring attempt was blocked, and stoping the opposition from scoring piled up much more pressure than scoring more than them.

The result was Iwatobi won the game with 67-58.

Shun returned to the locker room.

Shun: "Iwatobi Middle School won the Round 1. We will be playing against them."

Otsubo: "Good Work, what was the score?"

Shun: "67-58"

Ishida: "How did they play?"

Shun: "Iwatobi doesn't have tall players, and their skills are so-so. We would win even if we sent out the second-string team."

Mibuchi: "Oh my, should we send them out for fun?"

Coach: "No, you guys will be the ones playing. I want you guys to give it your best no matter who the opponents are."

Team: "Yes, Sir!"

Coach left the locker room to complete some formalities.

Shun: "Captain, today, I want to play more defensively and try to disrupt their teamwork."

Otsubo: "Alright, but, go on offense if the situation demands it."

Shun: "Yes! Aone-san, you should also try some blocking today."

Aone: *Nod*

The players then joked around, and whatever nervousness left about the season's first game faded away.

The coach came back after a while.

Coach: "Come one, its time for the warmup."

Shun rated the warmup routine followed by Tokiwadai highly. It consisted of three parts; first, warming up the body.

Shun did variations of jump rope, leg swings, reaches, minibands, single-leg squats, hurdle walk, quick skip, backward to forward and forward to backward runs.

The second was skill drills; two-line layup and shooting drills, so that players were comfortable at the start of the match.

And the last was the short 1vs1 to wake up the mind.

All of these took thirty minutes and helped Shun to focus and get ready for the match, and they were a form of a routine Shun loved to perform them. (Shun sure loves to follow his routines)

Shun: 'Alright, I feel good and ready. Now, all that left is to defeat Iwatobi, and the first day of my first, middle school tournament will be perfect.'

Shun smiled faintly and looked forward to the start of the game.