Chapter 126 - Are You Kidding
Yagami's three-pointer dropped through from the right wing.
Ryonan 20, Meiko 14.
"Ryonan is shooting the ball extremely well to open this game," commentator Maruyama observed. "By contrast, Meiko's perimeter attack has struggled, and they've been forced to survive on interior scoring alone."
The first quarter numbers told the story clearly. Sendoh had gone three-for-four from the field, made his one free throw, and had seven points. Yagami had also gone three-for-four including one of two three-point attempts, also seven points. And from the bench's perspective, the pleasant surprise of the game so far was Hikoichi - two of three from beyond the arc, six points total, and his accumulated time with the ball in his hands for the entire quarter had probably not reached ten seconds. He received, he shot, he moved. Nothing more.
In the stands, the conversation was running.
"Meiko didn't look as strong as all the coverage suggested, did they?"
"Maybe it's that Ryonan is just this good. Their interior and exterior scoring both look solid."
With less than three minutes left in the first quarter, still trailing on the scoreboard, Meiko Industrial made a substitution.
Morishige Hiroshi came out.
Number nine - Itakura Kyohei - checked in.
The Touou Academy players were watching from their section of the stands. Wakamatsu Kosuke leaned forward with his brow furrowed.
"Wait - why is he coming out? Morishige is their best player. Are they strategically conceding the first quarter?"
"Simpler than that." Imayoshi Shoichi adjusted his glasses. "They're managing his energy. With the body he's carrying and the defensive load he takes on against a team like Ryonan, there's no way he plays forty minutes at full output."
"A player with that kind of build who can dominate both ends of the floor for a full game," Aomine said from his reclined position, one eye opening, "I only know one person who can do that."
"You mean Murasakibara," Momoi said. "They might actually end up facing each other in this tournament."
Wakamatsu was still working through it. "But they're losing. If he leaves now won't the gap just get bigger?"
"Not if the rest of the lineup can maintain their scoring output," Imayoshi said patiently. "And there are only two or three possessions left in the quarter."
Wakamatsu wasn't well-suited to this kind of analysis, but thinking was always valuable practice regardless. Imayoshi held the thought and then posed the question anyway.
"Wakamatsu. Why has Ryonan been winning?"
"Um. Yagami and Sendoh are excellent, and that short guy keeps scoring too. Meiko's scoring seems to be all coming from Morishige. The other players have only made two baskets."
"But their shooting percentages from the field are actually similar," Momoi said, tapping her notebook.
Wakamatsu's frown deepened.
"Three-pointers!" Sakurai said quietly from his seat, unable to help himself.
"Exactly." Imayoshi nodded. "Ryonan and Meiko have made nearly the same number of shots. But Ryonan leads by six, because of the difference in three-point makes. That's where the margin comes from."
"Oh! So Ryonan's just better!"
Imayoshi pressed two fingers to his forehead.
Momoi took over without missing a beat. "What Imayoshi-senpai means is that three-point shooting is the critical factor right now. But the situation isn't stable. Ryonan can't keep up this shooting rate indefinitely. When it cools down - and if Meiko's perimeter options start converting - the dynamic will shift."
"Oh, right, that's what I was thinking too," Wakamatsu said, nodding.
The rest of Touou looked at him with a collective expression that asked a silent question.
The first quarter buzzer sounded.
Ryonan 26, Meiko 20.
Meiko had held the gap at six without Morishige on the floor for the final three minutes. That was the answer to Wakamatsu's question.
---
The break ended. Both teams kept the same lineups from the close of the first quarter. Morishige was still on the bench.
"He's really going to keep resting," Ikegami said, glancing over at Meiko's bench area. "At this rate he might as well stay there."
"Don't get comfortable," Uozumi said. "Use the time to extend the lead."
"Right."
Ryonan's possession. Sendoh brought the ball up, and Miyamoto was on him immediately with the focused, concentrated look of someone who had decided to compete from the opening second of this quarter.
Sendoh made a slight body movement, his wrist dropping casually to one side.
The ball moved right.
"That no-look pass again," Miyamoto said, somewhere between irritated and resigned. He had watched it happen multiple times already and it still caught him a half-step slow.
Yagami received the ball and Takeuchi closed hard. Yagami pulled back, then shifted his weight and accelerated forward to the right, shedding Takeuchi's angle. Itakura - the substitute power forward - came across immediately.
Ryonan hadn't seen Itakura before his substitution. A quick visual estimate put him somewhere between 185 and 190 centimeters, lean, without exceptional bulk. His first-quarter minutes had shown virtually no offensive contribution, but his defensive instincts were sharp and his rotation speed was genuinely impressive.
Before the double-team could fully close, Yagami's bounce pass went inside.
Uozumi caught it in the post, backed in, and rather than attacking immediately, raised the ball high and redirected it outward to Hikoichi cutting from the weak side.
"Careful!" Ikegami called.
At 166 centimeters, Hikoichi's passing lanes were easy to read and relatively easy to intercept if the defense was prepared. Sasaki had been tracking him since the pass left Uozumi's hands, and now he launched forward from behind to take the ball.
Hikoichi got his hands on it first, just barely, and responded instantly by stepping backward to create distance and adjusting his shooting stance.
Itakura had already abandoned his man on the other side of the paint and arrived at full lateral speed, arm extended.
He blocked it clean.
"Beautiful!"
Sasaki recovered the loose ball and outlet it when Yagami came to pressure.
Meiko's transition: Miyamoto and Takeuchi pushed ahead, two-on-two against Sendoh and Ikegami forming in front of them.
Meiko stopped.
Miyamoto steadied the ball and waited for his teammates to set.
On the Ryonan sideline, Coach Taoka turned to Uekusa beside him. "That's the right call. Miyamoto understands the gap between himself and Sendoh. And Ikegami is the type of defender you don't run at in transition if you have a choice."
Uekusa nodded, filing it.
Meiko's halfcourt offense reset. Miyamoto's eyes communicated something to Itakura without words. Itakura moved from the elbow area toward the right wing, setting a hard, clean screen for Sasaki.
"Switch!" Ikegami called - but in the space created by the screen, Sasaki had already received the ball at the right 45-degree angle beyond the arc and was coming up into his release.
The ball moved in a flat, steady arc and found the net.
Ryonan 26, Meiko 23.
Meiko's first three-pointer of the game.
"Let's go! Meiko!"
"Sasaki! Beautiful shot!" The Meiko support section erupted.
Three points. The gap had closed to three.
Hikoichi stood and watched the ball come down from the net. He pressed his lip closed. The feeling of being the designated target, the soft spot in the defensive scheme that Meiko had chosen to attack - it wasn't a comfortable thing to carry on the floor.
He looked toward Coach Taoka on the sideline. Then at his teammates. His expression held something he was trying not to let become too visible.
Ryonan's possession.
This time Yagami chose not to find Hikoichi running his cut patterns. Instead he went directly into the post for Uozumi with a firm bounce pass.
Uozumi caught it, backed Shimizu with his weight, and turned to deliver it high to Ikegami spotting up on the perimeter.
Ikegami's mid-range attempt came off the back of the rim hard.
Shimizu had held his box-out against Uozumi, and Itakura crashed in and collected the board cleanly.
Meiko's transition: Miyamoto used an Itakura screen at the elbow to create a clean path and took the ball himself into the paint. His left-side floater from the free-throw area found the bottom of the net.
Ryonan 26, Meiko 25.
Five points in ninety seconds. All of it orchestrated through Hikoichi's matchup and the switching assignments that followed.
The stands had noticed. The conversation tilted.
"The gameplan is obvious - they're going right at the short one."
"That kid at shooting guard is completely exposed on defense. The size gap is too much."
"Meiko is finding their rhythm. That substitution was the turning point - their defensive rotations locked up Ryonan's perimeter options."
Tamura stood and applauded at the sideline, a satisfied expression settling across his face.
On the Ryonan sideline, Coach Taoka stood up. The frustration in his posture was directed inward. He had been late on this substitution. The moment it became clear Hikoichi was being systematically targeted, the switch should have been immediate. When Hikoichi had looked at him with that guilt-loaded expression, Taoka had hesitated - pulling a player off the floor in the immediate aftermath of their being exploited felt disproportionately harsh, and that hesitation had cost them five points.
"I'm sorry." Hikoichi's head was down, voice close to cracking. He knew what was coming. He just hadn't wanted it to come yet.
"Hikoichi." Yagami's voice was level and unhurried. "The most important quality for a shooter is confidence."
Sendoh was already calling toward the sideline. "Coach! Hold on - no need to rush."
Yagami let the small smile show at the corner of his mouth. "You think they can close within one possession and then make a comeback while their ace is sitting on the bench? Give them a little more credit."
"Right," Sendoh agreed, utterly untroubled. "Two points. Everyone's acting like the game just changed."
Coach Taoka stopped in place beside the scorer's table. He looked at the two of them standing on the floor with that quiet, completely undisturbed confidence, and something in him reset.
"Excuse me - timeout or substitution?" the table official asked.
"Ah. Neither. Thank you."
He walked back to the sideline.
These two were calmer than he was. With Yagami and Sendoh standing on that floor, what exactly was there to be anxious about?
His voice went out to the court.
"Yagami! Sendoh! Let's see it! Show them what actual aces look like!"
Lock this attack down. Is a perimeter defense supposed to stop Ryonan?
Are you kidding.
---
Ryonan's possession.
Sendoh carried it up the court, opened a crossover, and went forward. Miyamoto lunged to cut him off. Sendoh lowered and slid left of the contact, through the gap. Itakura read the drive and rotated off Ikegami to pick up the lane.
The pass went right.
Yagami caught it and immediately used his weight to load backward into Takeuchi. A single hard push. Takeuchi absorbed it, his footing giving half a step.
In that half step, Yagami planted his left foot and drove along the baseline in a single stride into the paint.
"Yohei-senpai!" Itakura's warning came out instantly.
Shimizu broke from his position to rotate. Yagami had read every piece of the coverage pattern before Shimizu's foot had finished its first step - he had seen this response coming - and he met the contact instead of avoiding it.
He rose into Shimizu's body.
There was a visible, suspended moment in the collision - the kind of hang time that happens when force meets force at the same instant and the physics take a moment to resolve.
Then Yagami's arm came up and the ball came down through the cylinder with everything behind it.
One arm. Contact. Over the top.
Ryonan 28, Meiko 25.
The arena went up all at once.
The crowd that had been turning toward Meiko reversed completely in a single second.
Yagami landed, shook out his hand without expression, and looked at Shimizu.
"You still can't stop me. You should probably get that big guy off the bench."
Shimizu took a moment to fully locate himself.
Possession change. Meiko on offense.
Sasaki looked for the Hikoichi matchup again.
Ikegami was standing there instead.
Hikoichi was now positioned against Itakura, who had no offensive role in Meiko's system. The switch had been made quietly and without announcement.
Ikegami put himself directly in Sasaki's path to the ball. Miyamoto couldn't escape Sendoh's pressure long enough to create the right entry angle. He was eventually forced to dump the ball into the paint, where Shimizu's hook went up under defensive contact and came off the rim.
"Come on!"
Uozumi claimed the rebound with a roar and pushed it to Sendoh.
Ryonan transitioned. Meiko recovered fast and the halfcourt reset. Sendoh walked it to the right side and passed to Yagami at the three-point line - a step and a half beyond the arc.
Takeuchi was on him. The drive was the threat he was managing. He backed his feet up to just inside the three-point line, respecting the first step.
Yagami looked at him.
Something shifted in his expression - not quite a smile, but a specific quality that Takeuchi had not seen before and didn't have an immediate interpretation for.
No dribble. No fake. No preliminary movement of any kind.
From two full steps beyond the three-point line, Yagami simply rose and let the ball go.
Takeuchi's reaction came three-quarters of a second after the ball had left Yagami's hand. He closed as fast as his legs could move. He was nowhere close.
The ball traveled in a high, distant arc, the kind that made people in the stands stop their conversations and track it.
"There's no way he's making that."
"What a waste of a possession."
"From where? Can he actually hit that?"
The ball came down through the net without touching the rim.
Ryonan 33, Meiko 25.
Commentator Maruyama was out of his seat.
"UNBELIEVABLE!!! One minute! Contact dunk! Pull-up mid-range! And now a pull-up three from two steps beyond the arc! What is this player INCAPABLE OF?!"
"A transition deep three! Yagami Sorato! Seven points in sixty seconds! The lead is back to eight!"
Yagami turned his gaze to the Meiko bench.
To Morishige, sitting there with his blank, vaguely detached expression.
Yagami crooked one finger in his direction.
"You coming up, big guy?"
patreon.com/Twilightsky588 - 50 advanced chapters