Kadena-Kubasaki season-opening hoops just like old times
Published: December 8, 2011
For the first half of Wednesday's Okinawa Activities Council season-opening boys basketball game, it looked as if things would be very much like last year, when eventual Far East Division I champion Kubasaki seized a 17-point second quarter lead and went into intermission leading 2010 Far East D-I champion Kadena 43-28. At Kadena.
For Wednesday's Pacific high school sports results and photo gallery, click here.
Muttered to myself, "This isn't doing it for me." Almost as if on cue, a spectator turned to me and said, "Where's all the excitement?"
To which I spent the next 10 minutes, almost until second-half tipoff, recounting a game played by the same two teams nearly 10 years ago, only with far more at stake. Like, the Far East Tournament title. Not just the game itself, but the fans, the noise, the intensity, the total fun everybody had that night, Feb. 29, 1992, when Kadena edged Kubasaki in double overtime.
Somebody's ears must have been burning. On both teams.
For that second half evolved into exactly what I remembered that night. Maybe with not as many spectators, but just as much noise. The feel. The intensity of play on the court and the way the fans -- on both sides -- responded. The cheerleaders and the way the fans responded to them. How inspired players on both sides looked, particularly the home team, which erased that 17-point deficit and went on to win 80-73.
It didn't quite measure up to the "game to end all games" lo those many years ago. Nor Kadena's D-I semifinal win over Kubasaki in 2005, which many argue was even more intense than the 1992 clash. But boy, did it come close.
Sort of the same way Kubasaki's 41-20 season-opening dual-meet victory resembled all those years that the Dragons dominated the Panthers on the mat, before Kadena became something of a power in its own right in 2006. Especially at the lower weights, led by reigning Far East champion Steven Walter, the Dragons look primed to make some serious noise at next month's "Beast of the Far East" and "Rumble on the Rock" tournaments.
When was the last time you saw Yokota -- or anybody else in the Kanto Plain, for that matter -- steamroll American School In Japan by 44 points? The Panthers, featuring a blend of skilled veterans and fresh, hungry blood, demolished the Mustangs 51-7. Just a question now of what happens during Saturday's ASIJ Invitational; will Yokota or St. Mary's International, winner Wednesday at Zama American, gain early Kanto bragging rights?
Nice bounceback by Seoul American's girls basketball team, which saw its 137-game Korean-American Interscholastic Activities Conference Division I regular-season win streak snapped last weekend. Mecca Perkins (19 points) and the Falcons rebounded by beating Osan American 42-27 on the road.
And it's getting to be as common as snow showers and frigid cold in January -- Seoul American's boys, 4-0 to open the KAIAC D-I season, has played every player in all four games and every player has scored in all four games. Again, seems like old times for last year's Far East Division I runner-up.
Enjoy the weekend, compete hard and travel safe!
