Jeon Hyun-woo (27, 194 cm) expressed his gratitude to his teammates.
The team won 78-69 against Suwon KT in the 2023-2024 KBL D League at Icheon LG Champions Park on Saturday.
The team clinched the top spot in the D-League early. For them, the game against KT was also the last game of the D-League schedule. However, in the early stages of the game, the team’s shooting wasn’t great.
Aside from Han Seung-hee’s paint-zone scoring, less than half of the team’s two-pointers were made, and Byun Joon-hyung and Woo Dong-hyun’s outside shooting was completely silent. However, “Squad Leader” Jeon Hyun-woo was different.
He started off the first quarter with three three-pointers at 100 percent, knocking down nine points, and continued his hot shooting in the second quarter, knocking down two more three-pointers. In total, he made five three-pointers in the first half for an 83% success rate.
Led by the onslaught of Jeon Hyun-woo, Sangmu was able to regain the lead and eventually finish the first half with a lead.
In the second half, JEON Hyun-woo continued to create opportunities with his ball-less movements and helped the team with his mid-range jumpers and active rebounding.
In the end, Jeon scored a game-high 19 points for both teams, despite not playing a lot of minutes, 26:34.
After the game, Jeon said, “I told my teammates that this year would be tough (laughs). We haven’t finished all of our D-League games yet, but I want to say thank you to my teammates for helping us finish the qualifiers in first place,” he said.
As we enter 2024, Jeon’s shooting is getting hotter and hotter. While most players are fluctuating slightly from their average numbers, Jeon is the only one on an upward curve.
“I didn’t play much last year, so I was preparing hard from the beginning this year. I told the coach that I wanted to play a lot. Of course, it might not be enough for you to see, but I played hard and I think it showed on the court.”
The Commerce players must have realized how good his fingertips were that day, because they set up screens for him, and he worked hard to create chances by going back and forth. The result was back-to-back three-pointers.
Jeon said, “We always try to look out for each other’s chances in practice and talk about it a lot. But today, I think we probably tried to do it more (laughs).”
With five three-pointers in the first half alone, Jeon could have set a new D-League record for most three-pointers in a game if he kept the same pace in the second half. However, he was only on the court for 6 minutes and 34 seconds in the second half.
The current record for most three-pointers in a single 바카라사이트 game in the D-League is nine, held by Lee Kwang-jin, Jung Sung-ho, and Hong Kyung-ki.
“Actually, there is nothing personal about these records,” said Jeon. I just want to win the match with my teammates and go on to win the quarterfinals and further.”
On January 15 against Korea Gas Corporation, Jeon Hyun-woo showed his commitment to the game even though he was not feeling well due to a cold. Interestingly, his performance has definitely improved since then.
He tells a funny story behind this.
“I was so sick after playing that day, so I got tested and it was the flu. But the flu was passed on to (Byun) Junhyung. Junhyung also suffered for two weeks because of me,” he laughed.
In addition to the players suffering from colds, Sangsung is currently without Park Jin-cheol due to injury. Han Seung-hee, the only other big man on the roster, is also suffering from stamina issues after playing a lot of minutes. Because of this, Sangmu went with a small lineup in the second quarter.
Despite KT’s defense with Lee Doo-won and Park Chan-ho, Sangmu didn’t lose the battle for possessions at all.
“Right now, (Park) Jin-cheol is out with an injury, and (Han) Seung-hee is struggling a lot,” said Jeon. So in the second quarter, we went out with shorter players, and the part where we asked them to play a step further worked well. The game plan worked well. I think we were able to win the game because of that,” he concluded the interview.