Women’s professional basketball is a post-season system in which the top four teams start from the playoffs, unlike baseball and volleyball, which give the winning team a direct ticket to the championship match. is introducing And on the 17th, the ‘defending champion’ KB Stars lost to Shinhan Bank S Bird, and it was decided to be eliminated from the playoffs. With Woori Bank and Woori Won winning their 14th regular league championship, all four teams to advance to the playoffs have been decided.먹튀검증
Samsung Life Insurance Bloomings, which was ranked 5th out of 6 clubs last season, is maintaining 2nd place with 3 regular league games ahead, even though 3 key guards, including Yoon Ye-bin, Kiana Smith, and Lee Joo-yeon, were out of the season due to injuries. Shinhan Bank, where Kim Dan-bi (Woori Bank), the pillar of the team before the season, left, Sonia Kim and Jin-young Kim, the ‘compensation player duo’, are active as new aces, and veterans such as Han Chae-jin and Lee Kyung-eun add to their efforts to achieve a better-than-expected 3rd place. .
Last season, BNK Some, who won the final ticket to the playoffs by finishing 4th in the regular league, confirmed their entry into the playoffs this season as well by securing at least 4th place. However, with 4 games left in the regular season, BNK is chasing 2nd place Samsung Life Insurance by 1.5 games and 3rd place Shinhan Bank by half a game. Some people say that rankings don’t mean much when the playoffs are confirmed anyway, but BNK has plenty of reasons to finish second in the regular league.
Avoid Woori Bank with an 80% win rate
In women’s professional basketball, the 1st and 4th, 2nd and 3rd places in the regular league play a best-of-three playoff to determine the team advancing to the championship. From the outside, WKBL doesn’t have much of a regular league championship premium, so it doesn’t seem like there’s much difference between 1st and 4th in the regular league. In fact, in the 2020-2021 season, Samsung Life advanced to the playoffs in 4th place in the regular league and won the championship by defeating Woori Bank and KB in the championship game in the playoffs.
However, the 4th place in the regular league has to deal with Woori Bank, the regular league champion who boasts the strongest power in the playoffs. In May 2022, Woori Bank, which recruited the largest free agent Kim Dan-bi, confirmed the regular league championship early with a win rate of over 80% this season when Park Ji-soo had only played 9 games due to panic disorder and finger surgery. built In the postseason, Woori Bank’s triangular formation of Park Hye-jin, Kim Dan-bi, and Park Ji-hyun is expected to show even more power.
Woori Bank is also a very burdensome opponent for BNK. In fact, BNK did not win a single win against Woori Bank until the 5th round this season. Of course, Woori Bank has a weakness of not having an authentic center, but Park Ji-hyun, who is 183cm tall, is rather taller than BNK’s main center Jinan (182cm). In addition, BNK’s backcourt combination of 164cm Ahn Hye-ji and 170cm Lee So-hee inevitably leads to ‘mismatches’ with Park Hye-jin (178 cm) and Kim Dan-bi (180 cm).
Of course, since Kim Han-byeol, who is strong in big games, exerts his ‘spring basketball mode’ and feels the pressure to win the championship, Woori Bank is stronger, so BNK may boldly engage Woori Bank head-to-head. However, if BNK also has to defeat Woori Bank on the way to victory, it will want to be a championship match, not a playoff. There are plenty of reasons why BNK should raise the rankings to avoid Woori Bank as their first opponent in the postseason.
New club BNK needs ‘performance’
BNK was founded in 2019 and participated in the league from the 2019-2020 season. BNK inherited the records of Kumho Life Insurance and KDB Life Insurance and was founded with KDB Life Insurance players as the main axis, but emphasized the image of a new club by selecting Busan, which had never been used by Kumho Life Insurance and KDB Life Insurance. In fact, KDB Life’s key players, Lee Kyung-eun and Han Chae-jin, all left the team before BNK was founded, and a generational shift seemed to occur naturally.
However, BNK failed to make an impressive season, staying in 5th place in the 2019-2020 season and at the bottom in the 2020-2021 season under coach Yoo Young-joo. In particular, in the 2020-2021 season, he recorded an embarrassing win rate of .167 with a record of 5 wins and 25 losses in 30 games. On February 21, 2021, against Woori Bank, he scored only 29 points in 40 minutes in the 4th quarter, and was disgraced for scoring less than 30 points in a game for the first time in WKBL history.
BNK achieved a meaningful result by advancing to the playoffs for the first time in the 2021-2022 season when manager Park Jeong-eun took office, but there has not yet been a season in which the league has achieved results worthy of being called “higher ranks.” KB, which divided Woori Bank and WKBL by recording two championships and two runners-up over the past four seasons, was pushed into the bottom ranks this season due to Park Ji-soo’s absence, which is a golden opportunity for BNK to rise to the top.
In the 2010s, the predecessors of BNK, Kumho Life Insurance and KDB Life Insurance, which had been in the bottom ranks with Hana 1Q for 10,000 years, had to go back to the 2011-2012 season when Shin Jeong-ja, the ‘rebound queen’, was alive and well. Therefore, if BNK advances to the playoffs by finishing 2nd in the regular league in its 4th season, BNK’s promotion will be remembered by basketball fans as a great achievement made by a new team.
Rising to the top of BNK = Generational change in women’s basketball
Lee Kyung-eun, who has been active as the team’s signboard for more than 10 years since the days of Kumho Life Insurance, moved the team to Shinhan Bank when KDB Life Insurance announced that it would give up running the basketball team at the end of the 2017-2018 season. Players who lost their team spent a season as federation entrusted clubs wearing the 2018-2019 season sponsor OK Savings Bank Snapshot uniforms, and after the season, another leading player, Han Chae-jin, left the team in the form of a ‘sign and trade’. .
In this way, BNK has transformed into a young team with most of the players born in the 1990s or 2000s. Ahead of the 2021-2022 season, Kang A-jeong and Kim Han-byul were recruited through free agency recruitment and trade, but Kang A-jeong spent one season at BNK and ended his active career. The fortunate part is that Kim Han-byul, who was sluggish with 9 points, 5.78 rebounds and 3.67 assists in the 2021-2022 season, took over as the captain of the team this season and revived with 12.86 points and 9.23 rebounds.
Except for veteran Kim Han-byul, who was born in 1986, most of the main players in BNK are young players in their early and mid-20s. Point guard Ahn Hye-ji, who is very likely to become the 4th assist queen, and Jin An, the only league recorder with double-digit rebounds (10.08), were born in 1996, and Lee So-hee, who reserved the 1st place in 3-pointers (70), was born in 2000. am. Even Umji Han, who was recruited as a free agent before the season, is also a young player born in 1998.
If BNK, which is mainly composed of young players in their 20s with promising futures, finishes second in the regular league this season, it will be a very meaningful result not only for BNK but also for the future of women’s basketball, where the generational shift is late. On the 22nd, 24th, and 27th, BNK will play three consecutive away matches against Woori Bank, Samsung Life Insurance, and HanawonQ, respectively. As for BNK, to challenge for second place in the regular league, we must fight all-out with the determination to win all three consecutive away matches.