114-94！ In the 23rd round of the CBA regular season, Guangsha won 8 consecutive victories over Guangdong and continued to rank second in the league and closely follow the leader Liaoning. After defeating Guangdong again, this is also the first time in the history of Guangsha team to sweep Guangdong in the regular season.
In the first game of the second stage of the regular season, Guangsha team has already defeated Guangdong team. It was also the evening of December 26, 2021, when Guangsha still won 98-86 against Guangdong after the main point guard Sun Minghui was expelled from the game in the first quarter (foul + technical foul). In that game, the Guangsha team once led by more than 20 points, and most of the time they controlled the game, although the Guangdong team chased the difference of 2 points in the final quarter, but the Guangsha team finally won the game.
After 20 days of encountering the defending champions, and it was the guangdong team remnants after Weems and Zhao Rui and Zhou Peng's rotation, the strong Guangsha team still controlled the game from the beginning. At the end of the first quarter alone, Guangsha established a huge 13-point lead. After the first half, Guangsha led by a full 22 points. Guangdong has tried to narrow the point gap, Hu Mingxuan and Xu Jie have taken turns to attack the basket, and veteran Yi Jianlian has repeatedly forced a breakthrough from the position of the three-point line or so, but in the face of the Guangdong team with a crippled lineup, the Guangsha team did not give the opponent any chance.
"Three youngsters" Sun Minghui, Hu Jinqiu and Zhao Yanhao took turns to take over the game, veteran Xu Zhonghao repeatedly put pressure on Guangdong's substitute internal line, and the multi-flowering Guangsha also killed the suspense of the game early. In the second half, Guangdong head coach Du Feng did not send Yi Jianlian again, but let Xu Jie and Hu Mingxuan lead the team to attack early, and Guangsha side also replaced the main force early after Sun Minghui was almost injured by the pad foot and Zhao Yanhao's teeth were knocked down to the hospital, sending role players and Guangdong to play against each other, but this still did not affect Guangsha to win a 20-point victory.
The data can visually reflect the difference in the performance of both sides. In the whole game, Guangsha rebounded to suppress Guangdong 44-29, with steals dominating 8-4 and better control of mistakes (9-14). At the same time, Guangsha's number of shots is 83-69 ahead of Guangdong, and the shooting rate is also higher. With such an obvious advantage, it is not surprising that the well-formed Guangsha has won the Guangdong remnants.
With this victory over Guangdong, Guangsha also beat Guangdong in both meetings this season (only two this season), completing the sweep of Guangdong in the regular season. This is of great significance to Guangsha. Since entering the CBA in the 2006-07 season, this is the first time in the history of Guangsha team that it has swept Guangdong in the regular season. In the past, Guangsha did not say that it was sweeping Guangdong, that is, it was not easy to win a guangdong in a single season, and in the first few seasons of the team's history, Guangsha was swept by Guangdong many times even in the regular season. Today, Guangdong's state is fluctuating, the rotation lineup is stretched, but Guangsha is strong and strong, and the young Guangsha has also successfully achieved a huge breakthrough in Guangdong this season.
After sweeping Guangdong, Guangsha expanded the number of consecutive wins to 8, continuing to rank second in the league with a record of 20 wins and 3 losses, second only to Liaoning, which won 20 wins and 2 losses. At the same time, their 8-game winning streak also tied with Liaoning, becoming the longest surviving streak in the CBA.
Guangsha can achieve such results as a matter of course. This season so far, Guangsha whether offensive or defensive performance is very prominent, offensive end, they can average 107 points per game ranked third in the league, defensive end, they only conceded 91 points per game also ranked third in the league, they have become the only CBA this season both offensive and defensive are ranked in the league's top three, which is enough to see how balanced their performance at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends. With a sharp attack and a strong defense, it is only natural that Guangsha has been ranked second in the league for a long time.
Before the start of the season, Guangsha was actually not particularly optimistic, because they were still minor repairs in reinforcements. After releasing the main rotation for the third consecutive season (Li Jinglong last summer), Guangsha did not bring in strong reinforcements to fill the vacancy, and still promoted players from the youth team. On the search for foreign aid, they did not rush to bring in unknown foreign assistant Sorod Jones until the second stage of the regular season. In addition, Guangsha has not been able to break through the quarter-finals for three consecutive seasons since the first time in the history of the team in 2017-18, so whether Guangsha can withstand the test this season has become questionable.
But whether it is the first stage of the regular season or the second stage of the game until now, Guangsha's performance has always been stable. In the first stage, although they lost two to Liaoning in the all-Chinese class, they won all other competitions and ranked in the top three of the league for a long time. In the second stage, their schedules increased in difficulty and the number of times they faced strong opponents increased, but their record was still outstanding, foreign aid Jones integrated quickly, and Hu Jinqiu and Sun Minghui were almost not affected by the quarantine of returning to China for the country. In the end, Guangsha was able to continue to maintain the strength of the first stage.
However, this is not the upper limit of Guangsha, because they still have supplements. It is reported that their big foreign aid, former NBA Tanhua (2015) Okafor has been released from isolation and began training in Shanghai. If it goes well, he's expected to catch up with the regular season in the second phase of the regular season. In the past few seasons, although Okafor has little place in the NBA, his interior attack and block advantage are still expected to be useful in the CBA. For Guangsha, who lacked depth inside, the arrival of Okafor could help their second team. If Okafor can be integrated into the team, the overall strength of Guangsha can be improved.
In the 2017-18 season, Guangsha pushed Liaoning to become the regular season champion of that season, and finally reached the finals for the first time in the history of the team. Guangsha, now ranked No. 2 in the league, is the second highest ranking in their team's history in the regular season, after Liaoning. Maintaining its current state, I believe that Guangsha can make a lot of achievements this season.