Champion, please stay!

Chapter 14. Genius Brook is back! But something's not right.

"The Husky Twins" was the nickname of the duo Yi Shui and Guy. When Yi Shui was mentioned alone, his identity as someone from a mysterious ancient country in the East was taken into account, and he was called the Star of the East.

Many Husky fans had forgotten that Yi Shui had such a nickname, and the commentator hadn't called him that in a long time either. But when he saw Yi Shui grab a rebound, run the entire length of the court, and finally score against the opposing team's talented power forward, he couldn't help but shout it out.

He watches and commentates on games every day, and he can tell at a glance whether a goal is scored by luck or skill.

Commentators working at local TV stations earn pitifully little money. Most of them have a second or even third job, and some even sell their blood to survive. They stick to the commentary booth because they love their hometown basketball. They express their emotions more directly. If a player disappoints them, they will criticize him to death. Anyway, they don't have to worry about being fired because of their meager salary. They just want to have fun.
But if a player plays well, does he dare to praise that player as being better than Kidd, Kobe, Garnett, Duncan, and O'Neal? Question it? The kid is only in college, how do you know he won't be the next Jordan?
On the away team's bench, Calhoun was also very excited. Although he had performed very well during the Yishui selection phase, it was hard to say how he would perform in actual combat. After all, their defense was just so-so. These two goals put his mind at ease. This kid has really stood up again!
Yi Shui himself, who completed the fast break, didn't feel much about the ball. When he saw Hickson blocking the way, he felt that the ball was in the bag. His impression of this power forward on the court was only two images - being scolded by Garnett and being pushed by the 1.8-meter-tall Rondo to complete a long-circle layup. Poor defense combined with explosive jumping often made the opponent's offense more entertaining.

On the contrary, his successful slalom rebound made him even more excited; Coach Long's tactic really worked!

He didn't actually predict where the ball would bounce, but he noticed that one opponent moved differently from the others... Coach Rondo's rebounding philosophy is that you don't need to worry about rebounds that your teammates can protect; the most important thing is to ensure that the opponent can't get the rebound.

Having watched the 'Rondo dodging and rebounding video' countless times, he subconsciously followed suit and actually managed to grab the rebound!

With a 5-0 lead at the start, everyone on the away team was happy, but the fans in the stadium were not so happy.

The opposing team made a three-pointer on their first possession, and they didn't think much of it, since it was a wide-open shot. But this play was different. The rebound they had in hand was "stolen," and when they got into position on defense, they were overpowered... That damn Sidney (Wolves head coach) had been touting the "best frontcourt in the nation" for months, and this is it?

When it was Wolves' turn to attack, some fans chanted "JJ," and when Gonzalez advanced into the attacking third, the chant spread throughout the stadium. All 8000 fans wanted to see Hickson respond to that last shot.

With the atmosphere already built up, and feeling embarrassed after being outmaneuvered, Hickson moved to the right side of the three-second zone to establish position.

But as soon as he received the pass from Gonzalez and turned to face the basket, his heart pounded. He was already worried about the big white man in front of him whose arms were a size bigger than his own, but the center under the basket could probably cover the rim just by standing there.
Fortunately, a former teammate stepped up to help. Tracy Smith made a reverse run on the left sideline, shaking off Robinson and cutting towards the basket. Thabeet noticed this and had to move towards the three-second line to secure the cutting line in advance.

Hickson quickly launched an attack, starting with a feint shot... and the burly white man opposite him jumped up!
Hickson was overjoyed. He dribbled past Yad, grabbed the ball, and slammed his left foot into the three-second zone before jumping toward the basket!

The crowd erupted in thunderous cheers. Here it comes! The response from their genius high school student has arrived!
That's a really high jump! At its peak, his head seemed to be above the basketball hoop!
Hearing the cheers of the fans, Hickson grinned maliciously and, taking advantage of the ball's downward momentum, chopped it down...

Just as the ball was about to be slammed into the basket, a hand reached out from the side and slapped the ball hard!

"Snapped"

"bang"

The sounds of blocks and slams against the rim rang out one after another, and the cheers of the fans in the stadium came to an abrupt halt.

The fans were stunned as they watched the ball bounce out and Yi Shui, after blocking the shot, slip and landed on his backside. "It's him again? Who is he?"
In the NCAA, where talent abounds, Yi Shui was just a fleeting star in the Big East Conference. In North Carolina, where college basketball is thriving, some may have caught a glimpse of his name, but few can remember him as a mere flash in the pan.

Hickson, who was blocked, almost fell down. He staggered when he landed before regaining his balance, missing the opportunity to grab the offensive rebound. Seeing Thabeet grab the defensive rebound, he was extremely embarrassed and angry and lunged to grab the ball, colliding with Thabeet, who was habitually raising the ball.

The referee blew his whistle, Hickson committed a foul while grabbing the rebound, and the Huskies got the ball in their backcourt!

The fans in the arena went from cheering and screaming wildly to booing loudly in just a few seconds. It was unclear whether they were booing the referee's call, the opponent who blocked the shot, or the 9th High School student they were meeting for the first time.

After Yi Shui was lifted up by Tabit and Adela, he saw Hickson glaring at him with gritted teeth, and then looked at the giants and strongmen on either side of him...

He tilted his head and looked up at Hickson, saying, "Top 100 high school student in the nation? That's it?...Eh! Eh! Eh!"

Let's talk this out, don't hit me... Damn, who hit my butt... If you hit me again, I'll fight back... Ada..."

Yi Shui finally managed to break free from the encirclement of several teammates and quickly ran away.

He was careless; he forgot that all four of his teammates were former top 4 high school players in the nation! His opponents probably didn't even intend to hit him, but his teammates attacked him without hesitation!
If he hadn't been quick-witted and agile, his handsome face would have been hit several times!

...

Yi Shui's big hat was due to good luck.

He saw a weakness in the Twin Towers' defense and thought they might not be able to stop it, so he moved inside. He saw Hickson grab the ball before even entering the paint, and without hesitation, he stepped out, jumped, and slapped it right in the face. It was that simple.

If Hickson had been bolder and had executed a full-throttle tomahawk shot, Yi Shui would have been the one to be sent up as a backdrop, standing shoulder to shoulder with his 'model'.

The help defense and shot-blocking of a point guard are almost always like this: 1 point of judgment + 9 points of luck... and of course, the indispensable 90 points of physical quality.

With 5 points and 1 block, Yi Shui set the course of the game right from the start.

The Timberwolves are really weak. Last season, their leading scorer averaged 11.3 points per game, while the team averaged 59 points per game and allowed 77 points per game. They were ranked outside the top 250 in the nation. If the Atlantic Coast Conference hadn't been reluctant to lose two championships, they would have sent the Timberwolves to the minor leagues like they did with the University of South Florida.

This past summer, apart from "tricking" two talented high school students back, he didn't attract any outstanding high school students to join. So in the first preseason game, Hickson was treated as the number one scorer by his teammates, who gave him the ball whenever he asked, without even letting him show off his abilities.

If Hickson can unleash his all-around offensive abilities, both on and off the ball, and with the support of his former teammate Tracy Smith, they might be able to lead the team to a decent offense. The two of them are a perfect match for the Huskies' weakest defensive positions, the three and four.

But Hickson lost his composure after being overpowered at the start of the game, having his response blocked, and being taunted in the face.

Fight? His weak personality—so weak that he only dared to cry secretly after Garnett insulted his female relatives—only dared to glare at Yi Shui before because he thought yellow people were easy to bully. After seeing the giant and strong man standing next to Yi Shui, he didn't dare to utter a word when mocked.

He vented his emotions through his shooting, no longer daring to go to the basket where there was a giant who looked intimidating, and a guard who had just blocked his shot. So he opted to take a lot of shots from mid-range and long-range.

Yad's defensive performance suddenly improved. He lacked defensive awareness and composure, and would fly away as soon as he was penetrated. But since the opponent only shot from the outside, his advantage of physical confrontation and his ability to disrupt shots with his jumping ability came into play.

Hickson unleashed a torrent of missed shots, leading his teammates in a losing streak...

On the other side, Yi Shui got more and more excited as the fight went on!
If the opponent misses a shot, he grabs the rebound and launches a counterattack; if the rebounding opportunity isn't good, he just charges at the opponent, as if he's wearing number 23.

Unfortunately, such opportunities disappeared after a few minutes. The opposing coach, Sidney, stopped focusing on offense and ordered his players to retreat and defend immediately whenever someone threw the ball, effectively shutting down the Royals' style of play.

But when it came to positional play, Yi Shui had an idea after the first possession – to have Yad attack the inside and compress the defense, while he would take the opportunity to get around to the outside to receive the ball and shoot!

Not limited to a 45-degree angle, run wherever there is an opportunity, shoot when there is an open space, shoot even when blocked, as long as you can catch the ball and lift it up... keep shooting regardless of whether you miss or not!

When Yi Shui launched a fast break, Calhoun was already surprised. Yi Shui's shift to positional play made Calhoun stand on the sidelines.

But after hesitating for a moment, he didn't stop him. How could anyone be more iron-willed than Dyson last season?
Moreover, Yi Shui didn't just dribble and attack; instead, he capitalized on the opponent's defense, creating opportunities to receive the ball and shoot. In fact, this actually made the overall offense flow more smoothly, increasing Thabeet's easy baskets and Robinson's open shot opportunities. Originally, Calhoun intended to give Yi Shui 20 to 25 minutes of playing time, divided into three longer segments.

But seeing Yi Shui's playing style, he simply let the kid keep playing to see where the limit was. After all, warm-up matches are meant to test various possibilities.

So Yi Shui played from the start until the 12th minute of the second half, when his 31st shot went wide and out of bounds, at which point Calhoun called a timeout to substitute him.

On the television broadcast, the score was 72 to 39, but neither the commentators nor the fans cared anymore.

The Huskies are just declining, not yet a bad team. The Wolves, on the other hand, are rotten to the core. Winning is expected, and a big victory is normal.

All they cared about was the data from the Yi River.

连打32分钟，31投15中，其中三分球16中6，加上7中5的罚球，狂轰41分！外加8板1助攻2抢断1盖帽！

The data is outrageous, and the process... is absurd!
...

At 4:58 PM, the Husky team's first warm-up game ended, with them thrashing the Wolf Pack team 90-52.

A friendly match between a team with over 130 players and a team with over 250 players has no impact on a large scale, even if it results in a massacre.

It didn't cause much of a stir in North Carolina either. The Timberwolves, the disgrace of North Carolina, a team that stayed in the first division because of its ancestral legacy, it's normal for them to be slaughtered. Timberwolves fans are also unwilling to spread the details of the massacre.

But in Connecticut's school basketball community, which is only a hundred kilometers apart in both directions, it caused a huge uproar.

Connecticut fans weren't too concerned about the result of the warm-up game, since they won anyway, but Yi Shui's performance became the focus of heated discussion on the campus basketball forum.

Fans who didn't watch the live broadcast saw Yi Shui's stats in the match report and exclaimed on the forum: "Eastern Stars Brook is back?"
Fans who watched the live stream unanimously said: He's back, I'm pretty sure he's back, but something's not right!
With discussion comes controversy, mainly concerning the number of shots taken by Yi Shui. In the first 32 minutes of the game, the Husky team took a total of 55 shots, with Yi Shui taking 31 of them, accounting for more than half.

Some fans felt that Yi Shui scored 41 points in 31 shots, which was not bad, considering that others scored 31 points in 24 shots at the same time.

Fans who disagreed argued that this was only because the opponent was the Wolves; if it were a stronger team, Yi Shui's shot would definitely not have yielded good results.

Some fans also felt that Yi Shui might just want to prove they've changed in their first game of the new season, hence their aggressive play; it's just a warm-up match, no need to take it so seriously...

These days, smartphones are still in their infancy and mobile computers are not cheap. Yi Shui was unaware that he had caused a sensation at the school, and even if he did, he wouldn't care.

After the game, Calhoun took him directly to the locker room, not even going back to the dressing room, to avoid the reporters who came knocking.

He stared at Calhoun's dark face, not daring to utter a sound.

Tonight, things went a bit too far...

Some fans online actually guessed correctly. After confirming that his opponent was terrible at the beginning of the game, he did want to use this opponent to show his ability and tell the fans in front of the TV that he was different from before. However, as the game progressed, he got carried away.

Although the final shooting percentage was not bad at 48.3%, 10 of his three-point attempts missed, and he took more than 30 shots in total, which was clearly not in line with his own head coach's basketball philosophy.

Just as Yi Shui was racking his brains to try and explain himself, he heard the head coach's voice.

"You think the Timberwolves' home court has a crooked basketball hoop and want to fix it for them?"

"Huh? Huh?"

Yi Shui saw a half-smile on Calhoun's face, but his face was still so dark... Oh, right, the head coach was one of the darkest black people.

"Don't go out. After Lyon finishes your treatment, wait in the car. Going out now will only annoy you to death with reporters. It's better to wait until they get used to your return before contacting them. Let me deal with them first." Calhoun said and left the lounge.

Yi Shui was a little confused. When he saw Clark carrying a toolbox and pushing the door open, he asked, "Leon, Jim doesn't seem angry that I fought like this tonight?"

Clark replied, "You didn't play badly, so why is he angry? You already took 21 shots in 20 minutes of the first half. If he were angry, would he put you back in the game in the second half and let you take another 10 shots?"

“Oh right, I didn’t even notice that, but I remember Rudy and Jerome getting yelled at every time they threw too many shots.”

"That's because they couldn't make the shot! Why would he yell at you if you made it? Do you know what he said to me during halftime?"

"What did you say?"

"He said that when he saw you shoot, he thought of Ray, yes, Ray Allen from the Celtics' Big Three."

"Ray Allen! Jim thinks so highly of me?"

"No, you're overthinking it. You're nowhere near as good as he was in his junior year."

"..."

Seeing Yi Shui's reaction, Clark was pleased and continued, "More than ten years ago, Ray took 20 shots per game during his junior year. Jim was not angry at all; on the contrary, he would get angry when Ray took fewer shots because we needed Ray to shoot. In his junior year, his field goal percentage and three-point percentage were both over 45%, and he could score 25 points every night. This was not in the warm-up games, but in March Madness."

Do you think Rudy, Charlie (Villanuva), and Ben (Gordon), who have already made it to the NBA, could do it again even if they went back to college?

Yi Shui shook his head: "I think it's difficult, and Rudy... it's difficult too."

“That’s right. Right now, you can’t even compare to them. How can you compare to Ray? However, I do think you do have one trait that is very similar to Ray.”

Yi Shui, who had been repeatedly hit hard, suddenly brightened up: "What trait?"

"You're shameless."

Are you sure you're complimenting me?

Requesting monthly votes! Requesting recommendation votes!
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(End of this chapter)