It was a tough tournament but a fun way to start the season. Unfortunately this is the age group that starts to lose the better basketball players in the ninth grade to the the Freshman/Soph or JV and Varsity basketball teams. None the less, it's always great to play in the CYS tournament as it marks the start of the Peninsula League Season.The road to the finals for the Taisho C National White was a very tough road. They met the very tough BVUMC Team led by Ivan Linh and Jarin Panigbalan. Final score was
In the second round they played the ninth grade team from Eden which had defeated the CYS CN-2 in the first round. The Taisho White played a great game against Eden and had a 19pt lead at one point but the Eden team battled back to make a game of it but Taisho white finally prevailed in a hard fought game.
On the other side of the bracket the Taisho Black team was victorious over a the Team from Tri City which unfortunately had lost a few players to school basketball. It was a very competitive game with Taisho Black breaking out to an early lead and Tri City battling back to make the game close. But thanks to the fine all round play of Mitchell Lee, Taisho Black was able to secure a victory.
In the second round Taisho Black faced CYS-CN1. CYS CN1 had advanced to the second round with a full court press and fast break shoot out with JYO from San Mateo. The game between Taisho Black and CYS-CN1 looked like it might be a blow out but CYS-CN1 came back with a furious full court press to get back into the game and it was a tight battle for the full 28 minutes.
The Taisho Black team ran into a little foul trouble with both TK and Mitchell fouling out but thanks to the great all round play of CJ and Chris , the Taisho Team was able to hold off the home team.
That set up the all Taisho Finals. It is never fun to play against your own teams, especially when the object is to try and have teams as even as possible. The game was not a game of beauty as the half time score was 12-9 in favor of Taisho White. But as Larry said later, it started out as a very friendly game but as the clock wound down during crunch time, it got a little more competitive. Unfortunately, Taisho white missed a few three's to tie up the game in the last seconds and the Taisho Black team prevailed 34-31. Good games were played by TK, Bradley, Owen and Mitchell with a lot of support from both benches.
