Winter Cup Begins!

                                    

                                          
As the culture festival ended at Seirin High School, the basketball team prepared for the Winter Cup as they were pressed for time before the first day of preliminaries were to begin. Reviewing her notes with Riko one more time, Nakamura put her papers away as she watched Riko call the boys over to the whiteboard so she could remind them of the plan.
                          
"Ready guys? I'm going over what we're doing at the Winter Cup one more time. Eight schools are participating in the preliminaries. Two of these schools will win the right to participate in the Winter Cup. After today's games, they'll be narrowed down to four schools. Those four schools will play a league series, and the top two schools will go on to the Winter Cup. However, this time the participating teams are the eight schools from the Inter-High preliminaries. In other words, they're powerful teams who had successful summers. Our opponent today is the sixth place team, Josei High School! Let's win!"
                          
"Yeah!"
                          
Gathering all their things, Seirin headed to the court and prepared for the game. Watching the members step onto the court, Nakamura couldn't help but clutch her clipboard to her chest, feeling a little worried about how relaxed Kiyoshi seemed. 
                          
He seems like a person who always has their head in the clouds. Will he be okay?
                          
As the teams lined up to bow to one another, everyone was shocked to see Josei's first year ace shed a tear.
                          
What's wrong with him?
                          
Nakamura almost fell off the bench, startled when the player suddenly started to yell.
                          
"You said the coach and manager of the other team were girls. I was looking for something bigger, something more exciting. They're not SEXY AT ALL! GIVE BACK WHAT YOU STOLE FROM ME!"
                          
Nakamura clutched her clipboard even tighter to her chest, annoyed with how the boy basically yelled about how he was staring at two girls' chests.

                          
Sorry for not being sexy geez
                          
Noticing Riko was quiet, the girl turned her head to see Riko give an innocent smile to the boys, bringing her finger across her neck as a message that they HAD to slaughter their opponent, before she began to emit dangerous vibes.
                          
As the game began, Nakamura began to observe the match for data, mainly focusing on Kiyoshi. Oddly enough, despite him being a second year, she couldn't gather much data because he suddenly stopped appearing in matches last year.
                          
He did mention that he was in the hospital for rehab but never said why. Did something happen?
                          
Continuing to write down notes, she noticed how irritated Kagami was being, most likely from being double teamed and not being able to make any shots. Watching Izuki make a pass to Kuroko, she watched as he made a pass to Kagami, who didn't hesitate to run to their basket. Watching him jump, she couldn't believe that he had missed the dunk and headbutted the hoop instead.
                          
"He jumped too high!"
                          
Shaking her head, she couldn't believe what an idiot he was but also found it unbelievable that he was able to headbutt a basket that was two meters tall.
                          
Seems like the results from the training camp is showing
                          
~Time Skip~
                          
With eight minutes left in the fourth quarter, Nakamura was impressed to see Seirin in the lead, 53-76.
                          
We're doing better than I expected. Adding Kiyoshi-senpai to the starting line lead to unexpected results and some great data
                          
Observing how well Hyuuga and Kiyoshi was working together, it reminded Nakamura a little of how Kuroko and Kagami worked together as a pair. However, seeing his senpais scoring all the time seemed to make Kagami more than upset since it meant that he hasn't made any baskets during the entire game. She watched as his face turned red, almost being able to see steam be released from how angry the boy was. She observed how Hyuuga and Izuki tried to get his attention, only to fail as Kagami was way too riled up to hear anything.