The Osaka Evessa opened their 10th season with four losses in their first five games, including a 22-point beatdown by the host Shiga Lakestars on Oct. 18.

The Evessa, led by second-year head coach Shunsuke Todo, have responded in a way that has caught the bj-league's attention.

Resiliency has been on display.

Case in point: They bounced back on Oct. 19 with a 90-66 win over Shiga, and have rattled off three straight series sweeps, topping the Shimane Susanoo Magic at home, followed by road trips against the Takamatsu Five Arrows and Niigata Albirex BB.

Sunday's 85-82 victory over the Albirex stretched Osaka's winning streak to seven, with five of those games decided by single-digit margins.

The Evessa (8-4) sit in fifth place in the 10-team Western Conference.

They are 5-3 on the road and 3-1 at home.

The Kansai club has undergone so many changes in recent years that the roster has resembled a revolving door at a busy shopping plaza. But Evessa management brought back veteran guard Shota Konno after a one-year stint with the Shinshu Brave Warriors, and he's had a productive start to the season (12.6 points per game).

Second-year Osaka players Takuma Soma and Shunki Hatakeyama are contributing 8.4 and 10.1 ppg, respectively. Soma is No. 3 in the league in 3-point shooting accuracy (45.5 percent). Hatakeyama is averaging 4.1 assists per game with just 17 turnovers to date. They both joined the Evessa as rookies in January.

Though it's still early in the 52-game season, Todo has so far found a way to successfully blend the talents of his Japanese players with four new foreigners: swingman Seth Tarver (Oregon State alum), forwards Gary Hamilton (University of Miami, Florida) and Josh Dollard (Auburn) and center Jon Kreft (Florida State).

Dollard leads the quartet in scoring (19.2 ppg, sixth-highest average in the league), and Tarver follows with 12.3 ppg. Hamilton is tied for fourth in steals (2.0) to go along with 6.1 points and 8-plus rebounds a contest. Kreft checks in at 8.2 ppg.

The 213-cm Kreft recognizes that all players contribute to the team's performance, even if every action on the court doesn't appear in the box score.

"The last three games the opposing team would double or triple team me when I got the ball, making it almost impossible to score," Kreft wrote on Facebook after Sunday's game. "But hey, at least I know they respect what I do and we advance to 7-0."

At age 38, guard Naoto Nakamura remains a capable perimeter option, as evidenced by his 4-for-5 performance from 3-point range and 14 points on Sunday. He's chipped in with 5.1 ppg and 50-percent shooting (12-for-24) from beyond the arc, which would be second behind Akita sharpshooter Akitomo Takeno (51.5) if he had attempted enough 3s to qualify for the league's statistical charts.

League accolade: Dollard was selected as the Lawson/Ponta Weekly, the league announced.

In Sunday's series finale against the Albirex, he scored 25 points on 9-for-11 shooting and grabbed six rebounds. He had 11 points in the series opener.

"(We) went to a hostile environment this weekend and we came out victorious 2-0 on the road. Which makes it seven in a row that we won.

"They say adversity reveals your true character . . . well, label us some winners," Dollard wrote in a message posted on his Facebook page.

Upcoming schedule: The Saturday-Sunday docket includes Aomori vs. Osaka, Akita vs. Nara, Sendai vs. Toyama, Shinshu vs. Takamatsu, Tokyo vs. Fukushima, Yokohama vs. Fukuoka, Shiga vs. Niigata, Shimane vs. Iwate and Hamamatsu vs. Kyoto.

How the mighty have fallen: In May 2013, Yokohama and Fukuoka squared off in the title game, which the B-Corsairs won in Reggie Geary's second and final season as head coach. Eighteen months later, they have a combined 5-17 record; Yokohama is 3-9 and Fukuoka 2-8.

Back to work: Bill Cartwright, former Chicago Bulls and Osaka head coach, gets his first test as the Mexican national team sideline supervisor at the 22nd Central American and Caribbean Games, held in Veracruz, Mexico. The 36-sport, 31-nation regional sports festival begins on Friday, with basketball competition set for Nov. 24-28.