Kings go down to second weekend of defeat

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Golden Kings’ archrival since the days of the now defunct bj-Legue, Osaka Evessa, handed the visiting Kings another pair of bitter defeats in the weekend road game at Ikeda City Gym in Osaka. The match between the two teams is always a high voltage affair as the head coach of Evessa is Dai Oketani who was at the helm of the Kings for four seasons as the head coach of the Kings.

On Saturday, the Kings gave a big lead to Osaka from the start when the score stood at 2-10 after only four minutes into the first quarter, and could not reverse the game at all until towards the end of the game.

Although Rayshawn Terry was the top scorer on the floor, and managed to narrow the gap to just 4 points in the last few minutes, the Kings never really caught up and Osaka piled up points step by step, finally ending the game 67-76.

Head Coach Tsutomu Isa said after the game, “We tried to beat them after we were defeated by them on our home court before. This was nicer than our last match against Osaka, but Osaka controlled the game more than us, and while we missed plays, they did well.

On Sunday, the Kings started much better than Saturday. Their offense was aggressive from in and outside, and even though shooting was not very successful, the team used Osaka’s fouls and scored points with free throws.

The Kings’ rookie Ryunosuke Watanabe worked very well with another rookie Naoki Tashiro in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, and finally reversed the game in the 3rd quarter. But, in the 4th quarter, the atmosphere of the away court might have become too much for the Kings and they started missing a lot of plays. Towards the end, the game finally was reversed again, and the Kings lost 81-91.

The Kings now have had four consecutive defeats for the second time in this season.

After the game, Isa said, “Our members played and controlled this match well, but my decisions, such as the timing of changing players made this result. We keep losing games, but the next match would be the final match on our home court in 2016, so we will try our best.”

The Kings’ next game this weekend, Dec. 24 and 25, is a home game at Okinawa City Gym against Akita Northern Happinets.