Chapter 6 - Preliminaries, Here I come! (1/2)

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.

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.

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(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.

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.'