Inter High Preliminaries Prelude

Now after a month of training, the Seirin Basketball team is coming into form nicely, but with a team that's formed at the beginning of the school year, there are many holes in their strategies, offense and defense. 

Such example of said holes is that the team does not have any strategy for offense, which is probably 50% what they need to win a match. Sure they have Hideki and Teppei but both are under the basket players, and if teams can capitalize on this, it would give Seirin a hard time.

Another example is that on offense, since they do not have any strategy or set plays, they only have a good coordination and will most likely do a run-and-gun style. Run-and-gun is used for teams that have good passing coordination and a good scorer, which Seirin has adequately enough of.

And lastly, defense, they do not have an issue on defense as they are coordinated, but advanced set plays may or will wreck them.

But on the plus side, on offense the team has a trio of primary scorers in Teppei, Hideki and Hyuga, and both big men are efficient players and team-first players, they pass when they see opportunities for a better shot. A coach once said, "From good to better to best", meaning these passes could be converted to a much more efficient or better look on offense.

Especially Teppei and Hideki's combination. Even if they are both under the basket type of players, they gel well together.and they don't need the ball that much. So this would mean that Hyuga may, most times, be the primary scorer of the team due to him being the end point of the pass. 

(A/N: Not like modern NBA where two Centers or Centers and a tall Power Forward is much punished.)

Then a shocking discovery was that both Hideki and Teppei could at times be the Point Guard, Teppei wanted to be the Point Guard at first but since Izuki was there and Hideki vouched that he's on par with High School Point Guards, Kiyoshi reverted back to the Center position. Even if Hideki is taller than Kiyoshi, Hideki knew that Kiyoshi is the better Center than him, he may hold down the fort but Kiyoshi knows how to be a Center better than Hideki.

For the other players, Hyuga was the standout amongst them. He could knock down three-point shots in an above average clip or more than that, as long as he's not pressured or forced, he can make it rain. Izuki was shown to have a good vision in him, he can pinpoint players and passes and his level headedness allows him to formulate a play at one glance. Then the other big man Mitobe was as usual hard working and if Hideki was not here, he would be the main Power Forward of the team, his size and strength (which is more than Hideki) was better for the Power Forward position and like Hideki, he is also good at his position.

The bench players, Koganei (or now called as Koga), Koga has a knack for the game, he is improving at a rate that he could be a sixth man for a good team, he got the basics down to a tee and he got the fundamentals under him, what he needs more is experience. Then Tsuchida, he may be not like Koga who has sports background but since basketball is the first sport he played, he was able to learn the ropes of being a big man from Teppei, Hideki and Mitobe. 

Both bench players were taught by Benjie on things they need to know about basketball and the basics and fundamentals were taught to them. It didn't mean that the bench players were complete newbies in basketball means that they're scrubs, on occasions they could show Mitobe, Izuki or Hyuga that they could be on par with them on a rare occasion. 

The Managers bring the team much needed help, Benjie is helping the teams on drills such as getting balls after layup and shooting drills or teaching the newbies about basketball. Megumi on the other hand prepare the team's uniforms, water bottles and other things Riko might need from her, she is basically Riko's assistant.

Lastly the coach Riko, she is very hands-on with the player;s development, especially physically and on the drills, she wants to make sure that everyone is on the same page and they could develop chemistry in the short time frame that they have. 

The training that Seirin is doing was for the next big national tournament the Inter-High. 

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A day after the team got their group picture Megumi and Riko walked the team's registration for the Inter-High tournament to Takeda-sensei who helped them in registering for the tournament, which registration would last until Friday that week. After school and before practice, they got word from Takeda-sensei that they have successfully registered Seirin as a team that would compete in the Inter-High Preliminary round in the next month.

1 week after registering, they got a copy of the bracket, and they are against a team who got past two round of the Preliminaries, meaning a middle ground team, and since this is Seirin's first try at the Inter-High they would want to study this team, or rather Riko would want to. But Hideki had a (non-heated) argument with Riko that the team firstl;y needs to gel their chemistry together first and patch their basics and fundamentals as a team, as except for Hideki, Teppei and Benjie (formerly), they didn't have the experience yet to specialize for a game to try and stop an opponent. 

Basically, just 'outmuscle' or 'outscore' them so their body won't forget the team's core identity. And Hideki told her that on defense, he'll guide the team on the fly as long as they are taught how to defend basically.

Riko had some arguments against that, but ultimately accepted Hideki's plan, as they don't really have any core strategy or core identity yet. So now their goal is to practice their offense and let Hideki handle the defense. 

Now the name of their opponents are Kyoritsu High, a mediocre team that is lucky to get past the first round by being the better team against a new team or a team below their tier.Since Seirin is a new team, most analysts would chose Kyoritsu over Seirin 7 times out of 10, the other 3 seeing that Seirin has Teppei and Hideki. And Kyoritsu's biggest mistake up to the tournament is that they did not scout Seirin, being overly confident with their skill and thinking they'll get past them, well big mistake on their part.