“First of all, it’s good that we won, but as we continue to win and move up the ranks, I think the team won’t be able to win if I don’t get my shots in, so I’d like to make sure to make adjustments in my shooting time tomorrow.”
Fukushima East Ridge (Fukushima) ace #1 Arinzeyo Saito wore a grim expression even after winning his first match.
Fukushima Toryo easily defeated Hatsushiba Hashimoto (Wakayama) in the boys’ first round of the “SoftBank Winter Cup 2025 2025 78th National High School Basketball Championship Tournament”. From the beginning, they scored at a high pace from the inside, suddenly taking a huge lead of 35-15 in the first quarter. They maintained the pace in the second and third quarters and advanced to the second round with a final score of 95-61.
However, as I said at the beginning, Saito, who is originally an ace scorer, had a hard time finding his shooting touch, and throughout this match he was more of a backfield player distributing passes to those around him. Although they scored in quick succession in the deciding final stage, scoring 17 points, this was their first team with issues remaining for the next game.
Saito’s appeal is his high handling skills, dynamic drives and jump shots, and his passing skills.
Especially when it comes to passing, he has been consciously working on it since winning the Fukushima prefecture qualifying round. His stats were 3 assists in the game against Hatsushiba Hashimoto, but when you include the lead passes that moved the team, the influence his passes had was more than just his stats.
He himself says that his practice has paid off, saying, “During practice games and team practices, defenses were coming at me a lot more often, so around the finals of the prefectural tournament, I started to be more aware of how to pass the ball.Today, the help defensemen came at me pretty quickly, so it was good that I was able to find a free ally and make the moves.”
In last year’s SoftBank Winter Cup 2024, they lost to Fukuoka Daiichi (Fukuoka) in the second round, and Saito himself only scored three points. Of the current team, Saito is the only player who has played in games as a mainstay since then. This year, he is making use of that experience as he serves as captain for the first time in his life, something he is not used to at all, and is in a position to lead the team both in play and leadership.
As for being a captain, he said, “I’m not used to it,” but he evaluated himself by saying, “I’ve gotten a lot more calls from people on the court.” He prioritized passing in this game because he thought, “Basketball is not just about me, it’s a team sport.Because everyone else is scoring points, I can still win games even if I don’t score like today.” You could say it was a decision that showed his leadership.
There was another memorable scene towards the end of the match.
With 3 minutes and 9 seconds left in the fourth quarter with the score decided 83-53, Saito volunteered to return to the court at a time when he could have waited for the final buzzer on the bench.
“I wasn’t making any shots, so I wanted to make adjustments (for the next game), so I asked him to come out.”
In order to help the team win even in the second round, which they lost last year, let’s look forward to Saito’s explosive performance in the next game.
