Hyundai Mobis lost 74-75 against Suwon KT in a regular season game of the 2023-2024 Korean Basketball Association on November 11 at KT Sonic Boom Arena in Suwon.
With the loss, the Hyundai Mobis dropped to fifth place with a record of 5 wins and 4 losses.
After opening the season with a three-game winning streak, Hyundai Mobis seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough, but the team fell into a slump due to a combination of injuries to Signe Jin (187cm G) and Lee Woo-seok (196cm G) and a technical foul on Gage Prim (205m C).레모나토토
In the midst of this chaos, Hyundai Mobis started Choi Jin-soo against KT, especially to stop KT’s leading scorer Paris Bass. In a pregame interview, Hyundai Mobis head coach Cho Dong-hyun said, “We wanted to win because we have a tough time with set offense. We play switching defense to stop (Paris) Bass. Rather than leaving the matchup to the big man, it’s up to Jinsoo,” emphasizing scoring defense.
True to Cho’s wishes, Hyundai Mobis managed to hold Bass to two points in the second quarter. With their speed, Choi Jin-soo was able to take the lead with bold scoring on defense and offense.
In the third and fourth quarters, however, things didn’t go so well for Hyundai Mobis, as they were blocked by KT’s height and committed turnovers in close situations. Their defense also got sloppy, allowing 20 points to KT’s Lee Doo-won, who hit the game-winning free throws to give them a one-point loss.
Hyundai Mobis was led by Prim’s 26 points and 12 rebounds and Kebe Aluma’s (206cm, F) 12 points and 3 rebounds, but the rest of the Korean players’ scoring was lacking. The best performances came from Kim Ji-wan, who had eight points and four assists, and Kim Kook-chan, who had eight points and five rebounds.
On the stat sheet, KT struggled from outside, shooting just 17% (4-of-23) from three-point range on the night. Their inconsistency from three-point range, which was supposed to be the key to their offense, led to situations where they lost the lead to their opponents.
In his postgame interview, Coach Cho said, “We’re trying to find the answer in our overall defense. The other team held us to 70 points in an overall win. We want to finish the first round well, and we’ll think about the next game. We’ll think about it as we go down and watch the game,” he concluded.
Hyundai Mobis will need to overcome the difficulties of the first round and show their fans that they are strong.