China barely escapes Jordan in consolation round

MANILA, Philippines – How the mighty have fallen as China, which dominated the Asian basketball scene for the better part of the last two decades, barely escaped with a narrow 79-76 win against an inexperienced Jordan squad in the classification phase of the 27Th FIBA Asia championship at the MOA Arena in Pasay city Saturday.

Wang Zhizhi delivered a game-high 33 points while Yi Jianlian and Zhou Peng added 18 and 11 markers, respectively, for the dethroned champions, who were ousted in the quarterfinal round by Chinese Taipei.

“Yesterday was a difficult situation for us, last game we didn’t play well but we played better today and we will play even better tomorrow,” said China coach Panagiotis Giannakis.

Wang completed a three-point play to give the lead back to China and cruised all the way with Jordan failing to execute their offense the rest of the way.

Yi sank three out of four crucial free throws to put the game away after a furious rally from the Jordanians led by Welsan Al-Sous, who buried three triples in the final canto.

China will face the winner of the Qatar-Kazakhstan tiff in the nightcap in the battle for fifth while Jordan will face the loser for the 7th and 8th place finish tomorrow.