Perhaps it was fitting that it was the Tochigi Brex hoisting the first B. League championship trophy at Yoyogi National Gymnasium on Saturday evening.

Tochigi was founded in 2006 and started as a JBL second-division club from the 2006-07 season. Being a purely professional club, it competed against teams with the financial backing of major companies like Toyota, Mitsubishi and Panasonic during its days in the company team-oriented JBL and NBL.

While Tochigi has managed to fare well, the amount of money in the franchise's bank account has never been an advantage.