Although he thought Akari was very strong, considering the situation at Shiratorizawa, this goal was still achievable.
After all.. Goshiki always seems to be under a lot of pressure.
Of course, it wasn't pressure from the outside, but rather that he felt Goshiki was being far too hard on himself.
He felt like.. he needed to have a good cry.
Miya Atsumu clapped his hands. "Alright, let's head back for the meeting."
"Mm-hmm!" Hinata nodded, following behind Miya Atsumu as they returned to their locker room.
Seeing the Captain and the Ace walk in, Miya Osamu, who was leaning against the lockers, let out a sneer. "The protagonists always save themselves for the grand finale, don't they?"
Miya Atsumu stubbornly replied, "It's not like we're late, is it?"
After squeezing in, Hinata quickly sat down between Rishia and Unabara Uta, pursing his lips and not daring to say a word.
If you must say.. they were late mainly because of him.
Glancing at the extremely guilty-looking Hinata, Miya Osamu shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah, yeah, yeah."
Coach Kurosu didn't say anything either; after all, there was still a long time before their scheduled meeting time, and.. they still had more important matters to attend to.
Just then, the door to the locker room opened again, Coach Omimi walked in with Ogata, the two of them carrying large bags.
After placing the four bags on the table next to the lounge, Coach Omimi called out to everyone, "Come on, come on, time to eat!"
Seeing that everyone had a good appetite, Coach Kurosu nodded repeatedly.
Their match against Shiratorizawa is in the third round of the afternoon, following the quarterfinals for groups A and B.
There are still more than two hours of digestion time before it's time to eat.
Hinata was the first to raise his hand: "Food!"
Coach Omimi pulled out the largest and heaviest one: "This one is for Shoyo."
Miya Osamu's gaze was drawn to Hinata's bento, which, once opened, revealed it was packed to the brim with roast beef and various side dishes.
Hinata looked up at Miya Osamu, a flicker of hesitation crossing his face, but he ultimately asked, "Do you want some, Osamu-senpai?"
Osamu decisively grabbed a pair of chopsticks. "Is it okay?"
Miya Atsumu's mouth twitched, feeling an extraordinary sense of disdain for Miya Osamu's spineless behavior.
Before Shoyo could even agree, someone had already prepared to reach in with their chopsticks.
Taking his bento from the Coach, Miya Atsumu opened it for a quick look. The dishes were actually quite similar to Hinata's, except Hinata's portion was larger and contained less beef.
Miya Atsumu leaned in close to Hinata with his chopsticks in hand. "Give me a bite too."
Coach Omimi said helplessly, "Don't go snatching Shoyo's.."
Because it was very convenient in Tokyo, everyone's bento was specially ordered from a bento shop, they were basically made according to each person's specific meal plan.
For example, Miya Osamu and Miya Atsumu, who needed to control their body fat, had smaller portions, but since there were matches in both the morning and afternoon, they generally had more foods that provided a quick replenishment of sugar.
Chewing on the rice in his mouth, Miya Atsumu turned his head and asked Coach Kurosu, "By the way, among Shoyo's investors.. is there someone from Itachiyama?"
Recalling it for a moment, Coach Kurosu nodded. "Coach Himegomiya has provided sponsorship to Hinata in her own name."
That is understandable, after all, Hinata's younger sister has already become an apprentice, she comes to Tokyo during the holidays to participate in training.
Moreover, Coach Himegomiya's spouse will be in charge of Hinata's beach volleyball project in the future, so it is only natural that they want to nurture Hinata better.
Miya Atsumu began to fan the flames: "Shoyo, you should eat more so you can beat those Itachiyama guys senseless later and properly repay Coach Himegomiya."
As for sponsors.. he had received many sponsorships himself before, most of which came from Inarizaki fans and volleyball enthusiasts, but these were the type that were numerous but not particularly large in total amount. The bulk of the sponsorships actually came from the shareholders behind various clubs.
After news broke that he was planning to sign with the Black Jackals, many of his sponsorships were cut off. However, the account they suspected belonged to Shwaiden Adler was still making regular deposits into the account Coach Kurosu had opened for him, suggesting they might still have some interest in him.
However, most of the funds he uses personally now are actually provided by the Black Jackals, even many times more than before, making him look incredibly wealthy.
But although professional clubs are wealthy, they only invest in the top players; in the Inarizaki team, the only ones currently receiving club sponsorship are him and Suna.
Suna's sponsors include EJP Gods and Izumo Hornets, but he himself hasn't decided whether he wants to go straight into professional play or attend university.
However, even if they decide to go to university, the funding will not stop; in fact, once they achieve great results, there will be even more sponsors.
As for Hinata, his main sponsor is still Dai Nippon Railway. Although Coach Kurosu had previously rejected their massive conditional sponsorship, they have no intention of giving up on Hinata, small amounts of sponsorship are still sent to him regularly.
It is worth mentioning that, compared to club sponsorship, the social sponsorship Hinata receives personally is actually even greater.
Unlike the Miya Twins, who have many young female fans, Hinata especially attracts older, wealthy men and women.
And besides sponsoring Hinata, these people would also make donations to the Inarizaki Volleyball Club's public account, acting out of a complete fear that Inarizaki's facilities wouldn't be good enough for Hinata.
Miya Atsumu took a ferocious bite of a chicken leg.
It's decided. Once he joins a professional club, he's going to donate money to Hinata; he's going to be Hinata's biggest benefactor! All of his match bonuses will belong to Hinata!
Just thinking about Hinata's plans to study abroad and the terrifying amount of money he would need, his desire to work hard and earn money became even stronger.
Seeing that everyone had finished eating, Coach Kurosu pulled out a whiteboard and began to go over the details.
"Let's begin." Coach Kurosu quickly drew a simple court diagram on the whiteboard and wrote the surnames of the Shiratorizawa players on the magnetic nameplates next to it.
Right now, Shiratorizawa's lineup and tactics are difficult to predict. Because they don't have a fully formed tactical system, their playstyle is heavily influenced by the setter.
Aside from the players' individual skills, Shiratorizawa can be treated as two different teams depending on which setter is playing.
Hinata drew out his voice: "Oh—tactical shifts, right?"
Rishia blinked, recalled the previous training session, understood what Hinata was talking about.
However, his frequency of starting is not high now, so he likely has almost no chance to coordinate with the setter and the opposite.
Coach Kurosu was the first to pick up Shirabu's nameplate and place it in Position 1: "After our discussion, we have collectively concluded that Shiratorizawa will choose to have the more stable Shirabu start. In the previous three matches, Yura did not play in every single one, so overall, Shirabu has appeared more frequently."
While we cannot rule out the possibility that Coach Washijo might choose Yura, let's first discuss the situation of Shirabu starting.
Everyone nodded.
Following the rotation settings for Position 1, Coach Kurosu sent the Shiratorizawa players onto the court one by one.
“Compared to last year's lineup, Shiratorizawa's defensive level has dropped a bit, but in exchange, Shiratorizawa's players have stronger offensive capabilities now.”
"Currently, the core of Shiratorizawa's Block is Kawanishi Taichi. Although his blocking style leans more towards the traditional Academic Style, but.." Coach Kurosu's words paused slightly.
Miya Atsumu finished the sentence: "He gets hot-headed extremely easily."
Coach Kurosu chuckled. "Exactly. Kawanishi's emotions are easily stirred by the opponent's provocation, when he gets heated, he makes irrational choices, opting for a blocking style more similar to Tendo's."
Miya Osamu bared his teeth. "That kind of Block.."
Ginjima also nodded in agreement. "I hate that one."
Anyone who has played against Tendo would have a lasting impression of that Block.
Broadly speaking, the blocking styles during the high school stage are very distinct.
Some rely on coordination with the Libero to suppress opponents through blocking; representative examples of this style are Nekoma and Shirabu.
There are those whose primary goal in blocking is to restrict the ball's trajectory, relying mainly on subsequent counterattacks to score; Matsukawa from Aobajohsai does this quite well, their own Suna also tends to fall into this category.
There are also those who use blocking as a secondary tool and primarily focus on playing Quick Attacks, such as Municipal Kobe and Itachiyama.
And there are those who rely on a combination of solid blocking and serve pressure to suppress their opponents; the complete version of that style is Karasuno.
Tendo's guessing block is actually a completely unconventional style of play; after all, it is highly unpredictable and lacks stability, so it is rarely used by strong teams.
And the reason Tendo can make such a play style flourish is actually due to his own incredibly precise sixth sense.
This kind of innate talent cannot be replicated, which is why guessing blocks remain such an extremely rare occurrence.
At this thought, Miya Atsumu suddenly froze for a moment.
Setting aside the more mystical aspects, it is generally believed that intuition is essentially a subconscious judgment provided by the brain after ingesting sufficient information. When this process is slowed down and expanded to become more meticulous, it essentially becomes the process of "reasoning."
While it cannot reach the level of intuition, sufficiently fast reasoning can also sufficiently strengthen a technique like "guessing block."
However, this style of play requires a sufficiently clever mind.
The smartest person in their Volleyball Club is Kumagai, but he doesn't use his brain for volleyball.
Counting down further.. it should be Reo Mizuta and Ogata.
Reo Mizuta's grades are excellent, but like Kumagai, his performance in volleyball is mediocre.
Ogata was quite the opposite; his grades were consistently in the middle of his year, but when it came to things like volleyball tactics, he could grasp them instantly.
His planning and judgment abilities are highly valued by Coach Kurosu, who frequently assigns him work involving reviewing footage to summarize and summarize key points.
After this batch graduates, they won't have to worry about finding successors for the Setter, Wing Spiker, Libero positions.
Only for the Middle Blocker position, they had no suitable candidates.
Tokura is one such person, while that Middle Blocker from Fukami was just the coach playing a joke on him; after all, they could never actually put a short player in the Middle Blocker position.
Teruya Masato and the others are also just average; they aren't at the level where they could start in the lineup.
As long as there are no major issues with offense and receiving, they need a more cunning, eye-catching, unconventional Middle Blocker.
Ogata came from a graduate school background; he had chatted with the other party before, it was said that he had given up his graduate student status because he felt there was no future in continuing.
Japan has not performed well in various competitions over the past few years. The dominance of Chinese and South Korean players is unexpectedly strong, the current trend of artificial intelligence research will further squeeze the survival space for low-level players.
Ogata himself did not believe he could reach the top, since his family's dojo went out of business due to poor management, he ultimately decided to give up on that path.
His current life plan is simply to take college entrance exams like any other, then graduate and use his family's resources to inherit and run the chess hall and tea house his family established.
Volleyball is just a small hobby for him to keep fit, besides, he quite enjoys the feeling of strategic deployment in reality.
The professional exams at the Shogi Institute are traditional slow chess, Ogata said he had taken them twice without passing.
But Miya Atsumu remembered Ogata mentioning that.. he was actually better at playing blitz chess.
Being good at playing fast chess meant that Ogata's thinking speed was very high, his intuition would correspondingly be more accurate.
Ogata wasn't particularly tall, but he was 1.83 meters now, it was possible he might grow to 1.85 meters next year.
Miya Atsumu shifted his gaze from Kawanishi's nameplate on the whiteboard and looked toward Ogata, who was still by the door tidying up his lunch box.
The timing might be a bit off, but Goshiki.. would you be interested in learning how to do a read block?
Upon hearing this, everyone in the rest area looked toward Ogata.
Coach Kurosu also showed an interested expression, waiting for Ogata to give an answer.