RP cagers bow to Chinese, 51-92

Busan, South Korea — The Philippines had no illusion of beating the defending champion China but it could draw some solace from the lowest halftime output it dealt the formidable Chinese before going down, 92-51, last night.

For the first two periods, the Nationals and the Chinese muscled each other out with unforgiving man-to-man defenses but the RP team couldn’t crank up a good scoring run and in the end that did it in.

The loss handed the Philippines the second semifinal berth in its group and set up a must-win situation against host South Korea Saturday to be able to improve on its bronze medal finish four years ago in Bangkok, Thailand.

"We gave what we could give and we played our gameplan to the letter but the bottomline is China is very good and we lost to a better team, bigger team and a faster team," said national coach Jong Uichico.

So appalling were the Filipinos’ offensives that they could only make 29.9 shooting clip, making only 20 of 67 attempts, and nobody from the team scored in double figures.

But until the Chinese spread out its defense right off the third period and forced the Filipinos into a series of turnovers, the Nationals were still in the game as they limited the Chinese to their lowest aggregate in a half at 38 points, four points off the previous low of 42 against Kuwait in their first game.

But the Nationals couldn’t keep pace with the torrid offensives unleashed by the four-time Asiad champion, sparking one big splurge in the third quarter behind veteran Hu Weidong and Chen Ke while the Filipinos could make only one of six attempts with the 7-foot-5 Yao Ming establishing his presence under the boards.

By the time Li Nan struck underneath and Hu hit anew from the perimeter, the Chinese had moved beyond recall at 51-25, with 5:30 left in the game and the Nationals called it a day.

Another fiery run by the Mainlanders coupled with two of the six errrors committed by the Nationals in the period gave China a 71-33 and the luxury of finishing off the Nationals with a platoon of second stringers.

"The opposition gets stronger as the tournament progresses and we can’t take any team for granted. They are not that physical in the first half but we we were simply soft," said Chinese coach Wang Fei.

Hu Weidong finished the night with 20 points while Li Nan had 11. The Houston Rocket-bound Yao Ming had nine points and seven blocked shots on top of five rebounds in 18 minutes of play.

So disastrous were the Filipinos shooting that Dennis Espino found himself topscoring for the Nationals with only seven points.