Round 3; Tokiwadai vs. Dōjimazaki

Day 2 of Nationals - Middle School Division.

Tokiwadai arrived at the court for their second game, their opponent for round three were Dōjimazaki Middle School.

Dōjimazaki Middle school this year had three members who were taller than 180 cm, their center and power forward were the same height as Aone, and their shooting guard was also tall.

With these three members, they had dominated the teams in their prefecture in both attack and defense.

Their center and power forward played on both sides of the court, and their shooting guard's height made it difficult for the shorter player to contest to his shoots.

Shun looked at the Dōjimazaki team and saw how confident they were,

Shun: 'Well, they have a reason to be confident, they are a team with high physical attributes, but if they think they can beat us with just that, then they are in for a ride.'

Tokiwadai too had tall players; Otsubo had grown two centimeters this year and was now 190 cm, Aone had grown three centimeters and reached 187 cm, Ishida had also grown one centimeter and to become 173 cm, and Mibuchi was now just one centimeter away from 180 cm.

Shun: 'Tokiwadai has both physical and technique, we aren't going to lose to a team them, I will show that even if you have size and height, you won't be able to win against us.'

The game started with Dōjimazaki winning the tipoff, and they even managed to score first. The power forward brought the ball to the bucket and scored with ease.

Dōjimazaki's PF: "This is going to be easy; I thought that because they were champions, they would at least put up a fight."

Shun, who heard that, was stunned at the idiocy of the statement.

Shun: 'Even if you are trying to trash talk, at least do it after the first quarter, doing it at the start of the game is just stupid. Did all of the nutrients go to the development of his body, and his brain missed the chance to grow.

I can't just let my team get insulted, even if he has a brain of the size of a peanut. I just have to make it so that they don't ever have the lead in the whole game.'

Shun did what he set out to do it, after the first score in the game Shun didn't let Dōjimazaki have the lead, five minutes in the game Dōjimazaki was already ten points behind.

Shun knew how to play against big players; shorter players were faster than their bigger counterparts. Shun got around them with ease and scored continuously.

He even deliberately went to the taller players and scored against them.

Dōjimazaki' C: "I will stop you this time."

Shun just smiled lightly, exploded past him and layed up the ball with a smooth reverse layup. Reverse layups were a great weapon to have in your arsenal; when doing a reverse layup, the hoop acted as the cover against the defender for the player, and If used at proper timing, most of the defenders wouldn't be to touch the ball.

[A/N: Link for Reverse layup would be in the comment section.]

Shun didn't stop there; he started to score while allowing them to contest his shots.

Scoring against big players is said to be a hard thing, but with the right skillset and timing, you could score against anybody.

Same was the case here; the power forward tried to guard him at the lane, Shun stopped two steps from him and put a floater which went above his hands and dropped into the basket with a swish.

[A/N: Link for Floater would be in the comment section.]

Shun didn't stop here; in the second half of the game, he switched from scoring from inside to scoring from outside.

Shun took over as the point guard, and using the profile on Dōjimazaki; he started to pile pressure upon them.

In the first half, Dōjimazaki was struggling against Shun, but in the second half, Dōjimazaki experienced the pressure from the whole Tokiwadai team.

Shun passed the ball to all the members in their favorite areas of the court; Otsubo and Aone dominated in the paint, while Mibuchi and Ishida accumulated points from the outside.

Mibuchi even managed to draw three fouls from the hot-headed power forward and two fouls from the shooting guard.

But the one who truly stood out in this game was Otsubo, he for the first time outside of practice started dunking, before this match he didn't feel the need to dunk in games, but against Dōjimazaki he started to fully use his size and was practically bullying them under the net.

Even on offense Dōjimazaki wasn't able to do much damage, Otsubo stopped holding back and went beast mode, he started to pick up almost all of the rebounds, not letting Dōjimazaki gain an upper hand at all.

Dōjimazaki, who started with unbound confidence, was now drowning in the swamp created by Shun and Tokiwadai.

The person who was feeling the most pressure on the court was Dōjimazaki's point guard, in the second half, Shun switched his mark to Dojimazaki's point guard.

The point guard couldn't pass Shun, and he was experiencing a breakdown because Shun kept stealing the ball from him.

The situation got so bad that Dōjimazaki stopped passing the ball to their point guard, and they effectively lost a player from their team.

The result of the game was Dōjimazaki's utter defeat. The score was 88-40.

Shun scored lower in this game than the first game, but his stats in this game were more balanced he even managed to score a triple-double.

Shun's stats were; eighteen points, twelve steals, seventeen assists, five rebounds, and one block.

Otsubo scored twenty-nine points, nine blocks, and seventeen rebounds, making this his best game this season.

Mibuchi also managed to score twenty-four points and drew in ten fouls from Dōjimazaki, and showcased the true worth of his 'Earth' form.

Last game Kageyama Shun took the spotlight, but this game showed that they were not a one-man team.

Tokiwadai was on a roll, and they couldn't be stopped.