Saturday and day 3 of the Japan Para Championships. Our opening game was against Sweden which was again won comfortably chalking up a further 54 points whilst conceding 21. The game was an opportunity for Paul Shaw to continue to test and explore new lines and combinations including a 3.5, 3.5, 0.5 and 0.5, which was interesting. Then came Japan. Having experienced such a tight game yesterday we expected and got the same! Japan had their Captain Yukinobu Ike playing today whose height advantage combined with his ball handling skill causes even the best teams problems. He invariably wins the tip off as he did today and so it is a chase from the start. It was a furious paced Q1 with both sides equally matched. Although GB did well to create two turnovers we never managed to capitalise on them and the quarter ended 12-11 to Japan. Q2 was an exciting one and I think GB’s best. Aaron Phipps played well, hustling the Japanese into errors but again we made a couple of unforced errors which cost us the advantage and we ended the quarter 25-24 down. Q3 was disappointing. We started with a new line and it just didn’t work and we were quickly down by 3 points which ultimately we never recovered from. We were constantly under pressure as we chased to catch up and errors resulted. Going into the final quarter it was 37-34 and there was a sense we would not be able to make up the difference, which proved the case with Japan finishing strongly to win 48-45.
So with Japan and GB both losing one game to each other and with both teams winning all of their other matches, the final will see Japan and GB play each other again, but this time for the trophy. There is no question that GB can win the final providing they can remain focused and reduce their error rate. Japan are a very good side, but as we have shown this week so are we and some of our new combinations are really starting to fire.
David Pond
