Slam Dunk Team . [shohoku]

Background:Shohoku has never been really successful; it's never been into the IH games. Because of coach Anzai the junior high MVP Hisashi Mitsui joined the team, also in that year Takenori Akagi and Kiminobu Kogure joined the team. But after Mitsui got seriously injured and didn't recover for the district games in time, he left the team. Akagi grew as a player and was seen as a great center without capable teammates. Later Miyagi also joined the team and became a wonderful point guard, but with a PG and a center you won't get far... Then the super talented Kaede Rukawa and the athletic Hanamichi Sakuragi joined. Even Mitsui returns to the team after two years of absence to complete the marvelous Shohoku team. By the way, we see some similarities between Shohoku and the Chicago Bulls as we look at the jerseys (the colors, the font type) and the two rookies: Rukawa is already often compared to Michael Jordan and Sakuragi reminds us of the Rebound King Dennis Rodman.
Tactics:Basically Shohoku likes to play Run & Gun. It has a very speedy point guard and two very fast forward to make it work. But Shohoku has more possiblilties to play offense: Akagi is a top center, there aren't many players around who can stop him. And of course they have Rukawa, the ace player of the team, who can score from any position. He's able to get inside for easy lay ups, fancy dunks but is also able to score from greater distance with his jump shots and three-point shots. When the bucket is guarded very well, there's Mitsui with his great ability to hit three-pointers. So Shohoku has an arsenal of offense abilities, both inside and from distance.
Their defense is man-to-man. In some games they also played half court defense for a while. For players as Kainan's Maki they had used a very different strategy: four players to defend him! Sakuragi would defend the long range shooter Jin (Box One defense). Kainan's coach Takato brought in his second long range shooter Miyamasu and Anzai applied the Triangle Two defense, with Miyagi defending the second shooter.This team is very all round: it has a nice defense and a very strong offense with capable scorers such as Rukawa, Akagi and Mitsui. Akagi scores under the board, Mitsui from the three-point line and Rukawa from everywhere you want. Their rebounding ability is also very high with the rebounding king Sakuragi and Akagi.We can see that coach Anzai is a marvelous strategist, especially in the games against Kainan and Sannoh.
Weak points:The biggest weak point of the team is the bench: Shohoku doesn't have very good players on the bench. Only Kogure and Yasuda played well in important matches, however, they aren't marvelous players. There's a big difference between the base players and the guys on the bench.In their game against Ryonan it's also seen that the Shohoku players get a lot of fouls, which is a trouble because of their weak bench.Shohoku doesn't have trainings as tough as Kainan's and Ryonan's. You can see that those players are often fitter than the Shohoku players. Rukawa can't outplay a whole match if he plays his explosive scoring style for 40 minutes and Mitsui is due to his two years of absence quickly exhausted.


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