With Kazama's abrupt announcement, the team had quickly adjusted to the new vice captain, Mibuchi Reo, and the aforementioned guard smoothly transitioned into the role with the help of Hikigaya, Fukumoto and Kazama.
Along with the change in vice-captaincy came the change of morale with Momoharu.
Every practice he attended he arrived with a happy smile and made sure not to hold back in practice, absolutely demoloshing any of the second string players who he forced to play one on one against him.
A one on one in particular happened between Momoharu and Ogiwara.
Everyone watched the two freshmen face off against each other while placing their bets and giving their opinions on who would win the 1v1.
"Hanazono-kun is just a much better version of Ogiwara-kun. With his streetball style of play, Hanazono will win easily."
"Nah. Ogiwara is the trained version of Hanazono. Ogiwara will win."
"Hanazono's formless shots will be the death of Ogiwara, last I checked; Ogiwara can't do what Hanazono does."
"But what does it matter? Ogiwara's style of play relies on breaking Hanazono down with his defense and after Hanazono's demoralised, Ogiwara scores consistently, Ogiwara will win this one."
There were two different sides of the court.
On one side of the court included people who supported Ogiwara while on the other included the opposite; people who supported Momoharu.
Though these were the second and third string players.
The first string players were just here to see the match.
"Are you ready Hiro? You'd best give your all." Momoharu stated as Ogiwara smirked.
"The same to you, Haru-kun. You better not hold back against me." Ogiwara responded with a happy smile.
"I'll start on defense," with that said, Ogiwara bounced the ball to Momoharu who caught it with a smirk as he deftly dribbled.
Ogiwara broke into his defensive stance as he watched Momoharu's movements carefully.
As the blond haired boy moved forward, Ogiwara immediately obstructed the path.
'This is Ogiwara's specialty. How do you breach this, Haru-kun?' Hikigaya thought as he looked closely at the two battling.
Momoharu moved back with a smirk as he began to string together multiple dribble moves to confuse Ogiwara.
As he performed a crossover, Ogiwara watched the ball moving as if it were in slow motion.
Suddenly, the brown haired boy leaned in as if by instinct and made an attempt to swat the ball away.
Momoharu smirked as he swiftly performed a spin move and ran towards the basket.
Ogiwara widened his eyes as he got back on defense immediately, only to watch as the blond ace jumped from just inside the free throw line and looked as if he was floating.
The sound of a powerful dunk was heard as Momoharu dropped from the rim and landed reminiscent of a cat with a little bounce as he was still ready to jump again.
"Did you see how far he jumped!"
"This guy is too good!"
"He needs to be nerfed!"
A similar situation was happening in their opponent's gymnasium. The ace, Aomine Daiki was currently faced off against the captain of the team, Nijimura Shuzō.
And of course, Aomine was winning by quite a large margin.
"The freshmen's improvement has been insane!"
"They've just been getting better and better."
"With this, we might actually clench the win against Mekō, right?"
–––
TBC
