Starting Position, Get!

The next day after the match, at the end of the practice, the coach announced.

Coach: "We are having a change in the starting lineup, effective immediately Kageyama Shun would be playing as a starting member on the first-string team as the small forward. His position might be small forward, but he will cooperate with Ishida in making plays as well. That will be all, dismissed."

What followed was a barrage of congratulations and envious looks, but Shun was happy.

With that, the club activities were over, of course not before cleaning the gym.

When he got home, Shun told his parents about his day, and Shun's mother promised him to make something a little less healthy during lunch on the weekend, dinner/supper at the Kageyama household didn't have a place for fatty food in it.

Days passed as Shun practiced at the club to improve his skills and played as a regular starting member in practice matches.

The next event on Shun's list was the Nationals - Middle school division. Unlike high school where there were two significant tournaments; Inter-high and Winter Cup, Middle school only has one significant tournament.

Japan has forty-three proper prefectures, two urban prefectures(Osaka and Kyoto), one territory(Hokkaido), and one metropolis(Tokyo). In total, there are forty-seven prefectures who send out forty-nine schools(Two from Hokkaido because of its massive size and two from Tokyo because of the number of schools in Tokyo).

Tokiwadai Middle school is in the Tokyo metropolis region, and Tokyo gets to send two schools, the trend for many past years was that at least Tokiwadai or Teiko would be in the two spots. Last year Tokiwadai won the whole National Tournament.

Preliminaries for Tokyo has two blocks(A and B). Winners from each block get the ticket to the Nationals. Each block has three initial rounds, semi-finals, and finals.

Top eight teams from the last preliminaries get seeded and skip the first initial round. Tokiwadai and Teiko were among the seeded schools as usual.

Practice and drills became a little harder because of the upcoming preliminaries, and Shun could see that all noticeable members had developed something special for it.

Otsubo's timing for jumping for rebounds got better.

Aone learned to balance between muscling in and driving in with speed according to the situation.

Ishida's outside shot accuracy and shot placement improved.

Most importantly, Mibuchi had finally developed his Heaven shot, a high fade-away jumper, and was even showing hints of developing his Earth shot, shooting while drawing a foul.

Shun also worked hard to improve his post moves so that he could play in the paint without any difficulties. Post moves were becoming less and less popular in modern basketball as guard positions started to hold more dominance in scoring. Shun knew that but still choose to polish them as he knew he would have to go against Murasakibara in the paint.

While practicing and improving, Shun realized how less did Kise took advantage of his ability. Perfect Copy was able to copy a move after seeing it once, and Kise used it just like that, but Shun used it differently.

When Kise first met Kagami, Kagami displayed a quick spin to throw off Kise and dunked the ball after that. When Kise copied Kagami, he was able to perform a faster and sharper copy because of he being physically stronger.

What Shun did was; when he copied a move he would image it like a structure made of legos, and he takes out, and replace the pieces that could be improved, forming a better structure.

Shun: 'But that could be attributed to his circumstances, Kise kept changing sports when he was able to beat the people around him, and he didn't need to put the extra effort. Plus he had quite less experience with basketball than others, and because he couldn't copy other miracles at the start, he made it his goal to copy their moves as a challenge, and didn't consider the route I am taking.'

Shun's route was similar in concept to Haizaki Shogo, who put in his rhythm into the copied moves changing them ever so slightly.

[A/N: Only similar not the same; they are not congruent but similar.]

While Shun and his teammates were improving, Teiko was also undergoing notable changes. For the first time in the history of Teiko, there was not a single third-year player on the starting lineup.

Teiko Middle school's starting lineup had changed.

Nijimura Shūzō, Second-year, Power Forward, Captain.

Akashi Seijūrō, First-year, Point Guard.

Midorima Shintarō, First-year, Shooting Guard.

Aomine Daiki, First-year, Small Forward.

Murasakibara Atsushi, First-year, Center.

Along with Haizaki Shogo, First-year, Small Forward, and Kuroko Tetsuya, First-year, sixth man as a passing specialist.

The news was spreading that starting lineup, and the reserve bench of Teiko was now occupied by first-years. At first, their peer schools laughed at them for taking such a decision; but after the continuous string victories in practice matches, no one was able to say anything.

There were even rumors that the passing game of Teiko was another level that the defense could only stand and look as before the knew it the ball was scored in their basket.

It was the start of a new era.

A few days later, the bracket for the preliminaries arrived, Tokiwadai as the first seed in bracket A and Teiko as the first seed in the bracket B.

[A/N: I have put them into different brackets so that they don't meet in the preliminaries, and only duke it out in the Nationals.Tell me in the comments, what do you think about this decision.]

In Shōei Middle School, Kiyoshi Teppei, along with his teammates were having fun, while simultaneously preparing seriously for the upcoming preliminaries.

In other prefectures, Hanamiya Makoto, Hayama Kotaro, and Nebuya Eikichi were also practicing hard to get the Nationals.

[A/N: I put other uncrowned kings in other prefectures, not all talented player can be from the same region.]

A storm was brewing in the Japanese Middle School basketball scene, and right now was the calm before the storm.

Shun could also feel it that this National tournament was going to be epic, and he looked forward to playing against all that it had to offer.