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Well it was back to earth but still a great season so far. Looks like everyone except Furusawa and Suenami had a very bad shooting night. Especially bad by Hayakawa who was in proficient GS and was the right choice but who was horrible hitting 2/10, as many turnovers as defensive rebounds (3) and fouled out in 26 minutes.

Frickin' Lazarus man...

National Team Press Release



Nippon NT slips to Malaysia, rallies over India to 3-1

Let me start by apologizing for the lack of posts recently. I had a trip to Singapore last week and then got sick there over the weekend before my return and I am just now recovering. So let me try to catch up on things.

Game 3: Malaysia 104 – Nippon 89
Now with Nippon fully in the spotlight Malaysia came into the game ready to battle, and on this night our team didn’t seem up to the challenge. If you look at the stat sheet, the game was pretty even across the board except for FG% where Malaysia led 48% to 39%. Malaysia dominated inside with their two starting Bigs combining for 57pts. For Nippon, Furusawa was the main source of production with 29 points and 17 rebounds. There wasn’t much more production to highlight for the rest of the team.

As the teams walked off the a sideline reporter grabbed Furusawa and asked “So, what happened to you guys out there tonight” To that Furusawa responded “I Lost my team. Where did they go? Asked around but nobody knows!”

Line-up used against Malaysia:

Point Guard
Takatoshi Tagawa
*Genki Kanagaki
Haruki Fuji

Shooting Guard
Hideki Ochi
Masatomo Saiki
*Genki Kanagaki

Small Forward
Tooro Oishi
Yuhei Suenami
Haoya Ueda

Power Forward
Yusuke Furusawa
Hirofumi Sonoda
Kaname Kouzuki

Center
Satashi Hayakawa
Hirofumi Sonoda
Kaname Kouzuki

*denotes player was added to roster for this game



Game 4: Nippon 99 – India 85

Nippon NT bounces back from a disappointing first loss to get back on track with a convincing win over India. Our team was actually down 3 points at half but completely took over in the second, surging to a 21 point lead late in the 4th quarter. The player of the game for our boys was Hirofumi Sonoda with28pts and 12 boards. Other standouts included Fursawa (21pts, 10reb), Oishi (18pts, 5ast), and Tagawa (8pts, 7ast). From a team perspective there were 30 total assists which is the best this season.

Seeing a Camera, Furusawa grabbed the MIC “My brother Sonoda, and brother Oishi came to play. It’s so much more fun with the boys around. And did you see the way Tagawa was throwing the rock? Man that was Awesome!!! Second round here we come.”

Next week we are on bye and I’m trying to get a game against one of the Americas teams that are on bye as well. Game of note next week for our standings is Malaysia vs Australia.


Line-up used against India:

Point Guard
Takatoshi Tagawa
Rikkio Egguchi
Genki Kanagaki

Shooting Guard
Hideki Ochi
Masatomo Saiki
Genki Kanagaki

Small Forward
Tooro Oishi
Haoya Ueda
Yuhei Suenami

Power Forward
Yusuke Furusawa
Mitsuo Shibukji
Satashi Hayakawa

Center
Hirofumi Sonoda
Mitsuo Shibukji
Satashi Hayakawa

Brilliant coaching and reading this just made my day:

The player of the game for our boys was Hirofumi Sonoda with28pts and 12 boards.

That is what I am working for. All those trainings when he was already capped, proficient GS by risking league matches. Excellent work by the whole team and we are moving up the rankings and really taking some teams by surprise.

We have secured a scrimmage for this week which will be played at 7PM Japan time on a neutral court:

#59 Panama vs #62 Nippon

Game 5 Preview - Pakistan

Tonight we play Pakistan. Pakistan is currently 2-3 and tonight is their last game. They have a mathematical chance of still qualifying for the next round if they win tonight's game and one of the 4 top teams loses their last two and falls below them in PD. They are probably looking at us as the team they are hoping to get ahead of because we currently have the lowest PD of the team's they are chasing. However we are also the only team that has not played Macau yet.

So, they basically are hoping for us to lose to them tonight and somehow slip against Macau next week. As such this is a must win for them and so they should CT us. For us however, our next game (Macau) is close to a guaranteed win and that puts us through automatically, which makes tonight not quite as critical. I guess we'll see how it turns out soon.

Pakistan looked like the only team trying out there.

We all know what that means. The 30 point loss was a little ugly and I hope PD wont kill us but a win over Macau and we are through. Surely.

Yeah, they needed that win more than us and I wasn't going to fight them. They are a good enough team that if they CT they would probably win. Objective is to advance to the next round. Number of wins in first round doesn't mean anything once we get to the next round. Macau is very weak and we should have no problem with them.

It was another week of training Sonoda in 1on1 (only 36 mins due to a screw up) with a level 6 coach and again no pops. That must be 6-7 weeks of 1on1 he has had without a pop in JS, IS or HA. Capped. Firmly. Forever. I am very sad about this. All the salary calculators say he is right at the bottom of superstar but I guess that is just bad luck for me. Even if he is a NT player I just can't justify banging my head against a brick wall like this any more when I have Kawaida, Konoe, Umari, Kawagichi, Kyubei and the Shinkansen all needing training and hopefully not capped.