The expansion Rizing Fukuoka defied the odds last season, winning eight of 11 games, including a wild-card upset triumph over the host Takamatsu Five Arrows, to advance to the playoff semifinals.
Second-year coach John Neumann hopes to see similar results from his squad this season.
"We are short and we don't shoot as well as we did last year," Neumann said by phone on Thursday from his home in Fukuoka. "But we are learning and we started OK last year and didn't jell as a team until really the end of the year.