In the first leg of the 2022-2023 SKT A-Dot Professional Basketball Championship, Seoul SK, the ‘defending champion’, caught Anyang KGC Ginseng Corporation, the regular league champion. In the enemy territory, he won a valuable victory first. In professional basketball, which was launched in 1997, the probability of winning the final victory for the team that caught the first game of the best-of-seven series is 72%.
However, SK’s actual chance of winning is higher than that. because of the different way.
This year’s championship game format was changed from ‘2-2-1-1-1’ to ‘2-3-2’ due to the gym rental situation. The 1st and 2nd games will be held in Anyang, and the 3rd, 4th and 5th games will be held in Jamsil, Seoul, the home of SK. And the last 6th and 7th games will be held again in Anyang.
If the condition is limited to the previous championship match held in the ‘2-3-2’ format, the winning team in the first leg of the away game has a higher chance of winning.
So far, there have been a total of six cases where the visiting team has won the first leg in the ‘2-3-2’ format. Among them, there has only been one case where a team that lost the first game at home overturned the series and came out on top (2009, Jeonju KCC).
In the ‘2-3-2’ method, SK’s chance of winning the first game on the road soars to 83%.
SK coach Jeon Hee-chul said, “Even if we only win one game in two consecutive away games, it’s a success.” KGC Ginseng Corporation was deprived of the home court advantage by losing the first game. This means that if each team succeeds in defending the home court in the remaining 6 games, the championship will belong to SK.
Even if KGC Ginseng Corporation wins 1 win and 1 loss, the situation cannot be optimistic because the tricky Jamsil 3-game series is waiting. SK is a very strong team on the home court.
The most urgent thing for KGC Ginseng Corporation is to return the series to the original point of 1 win and 1 loss. Aside from the format, there is only one case where a team that suffered two losses after playing the first two games on the home court won the championship match (Daejeon Hyundai in 1998. At that time, the championship match was a 2-2-3 format including neutral matches. Hyundai captured all of the 3rd and 4th away games and won the final 7th game in 3 consecutive games in neutral Seoul and Jamsil).
Kgc Ginseng Corporation should raise the defensive concentration. In the first game, Kim Seon-hyung and Jameel Warney’s ‘Molppang Basketball’ collapsed helplessly. The gap between the attacker and the defender was ambiguous, so SK One-Two Punch had enough space to throw the floater. There are two main things that can fill this space. It is a new defensive tactic and a focus that goes one step further.
Oh Se-geun was perfect in the first game. The veteran big man, born in 1987, recorded 21 points and 16 rebounds in 36 minutes of play.ㅋㅋㅋ벳
However, the record of Byun Jun-hyung, the center of the new team, was only 11 points, 4 assists, and a field goal success rate of 31%. While mainly in charge of Kim Seon-hyung’s defense, he had to spend as much energy on defense as on offense. At KGC Ginseng Corporation, Byun Jun-hyung must somehow survive.
In addition, it is noteworthy whether there will be a change in the utilization plan of Moon Seong-gon, who won the regular league best defense award for 4 consecutive years, and Lens Abando, who played an active role as SK’s natural enemy during the regular league, but only scored 4 points in the first game.
The second round of the championship match between KGC Ginseng Corporation and SK will be held at Anyang Gymnasium in Gyeonggi-do at 7:00 pm on the 27th.