Keita Imamura dropped a team-high 15 points and Ryuichi Kishimoto added 14 as defending champions the Ryukyu Golden Kings outgunned the Hiroshima Dragonflies 74-62 in Game 1 of the B-League finals on Saturday.
Contesting their third straight Japanese basketball championship series, the Okinawa-based Golden Kings led wire to wire but had to withstand a late fightback by the first-time finalist Dragonflies at Yokohama Arena.
Head coach Dai Oketani's men led 24-16 at the end of the first period and broke the game open with a 19-9 second quarter. They outshot Hiroshima 15-8 from three-point range, with Imamura racking up all of his points from beyond the arc.
Having trailed by double digits for most of the game, the Dragonflies cut it to 65-57 on Kerry Blackshear Jr.'s jumper with 3:38 left in the fourth.
Imamura hit from downtown to stretch the lead back to 68-57 with 2:28 left and another big three from Kishimoto made it 71-59 as the clock ticked under two minutes.
Game 2 of the best-of-three series will tip off Sunday at the same venue.
