After losing to France in the Olympic qualifying round, the Chinese women's basketball team will face the final battle tomorrow
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the Chinese women's basketball team continued its journey.
On February 10, Beijing time, the Chinese women's basketball team welcomed the second opponent of the Olympic qualifying tournament in Xi'an, the French women's basketball team, and finally the Chinese women's basketball team lost 50-82.
After losing this game, the Chinese women's basketball team will play against Puerto Rico on the evening of February 11, and the victory or defeat against Puerto Rico will also determine whether the Chinese women's basketball team can qualify for the Paris Olympics.
In the latest FIBA world rankings, the French women's basketball team is ranked fourth, and they won a silver medal at London 2012, a fourth place finish at Rio 2016, and a bronze medallist at Tokyo.
Although the French women's basketball team has qualified for the Olympics in advance as the host, the French team attaches great importance to the last international women's basketball tournament before the Olympic Games, and two-time Olympic veteran Marlene Johannes has returned to the national team after a year.
It is worth mentioning that Johannes, who won the best defender in the UEFA Champions League, played for the WNBA New York Liberty and was also teammates with Han Xu.
Talking about this competition between teammates, Han Xu said, "We met in the cafeteria, I said hello when I was eating with her, and I felt very cordial when I saw her. I asked her how she was and she said it was good, she was playing really well in the Europa League, she was in good form, and I hope we'll see you on the pitch. ”
Before this game, both teams won the last game by a big score - the Chinese women's basketball team defeated the New Zealand women's basketball team 94-47, and the French women's basketball team defeated the Puerto Rico women's basketball team 88-40.
Facing the French women's basketball team, coach Zheng Wei made adjustments to the starting list and sent Wang Siyu, Yang Liwei, Li Meng, Huang Sijing and Han Xu to the starting lineup.
At the beginning of the game, Huang Sijing scored three points, and the Chinese women's basketball team opened up the situation through long-range shots. However, in the first quarter of the game, the Chinese women's basketball team was not ideal in defensive rebounding, and the French team grabbed frontcourt rebounds many times, and the Chinese women's basketball team fell behind 7-12 in the first quarter of rebounding. With Johannes coming off the bench and hitting two three-pointers, the French women's basketball team led the Chinese women's basketball team 17-10 in the first quarter.
In the second quarter of the game, the French team hit three points from the outside in a row, and the Chinese women's basketball team still didn't find much way on the offensive end, and the French women's basketball team expanded the score to 44-24 at halftime.
In the first half of the game, the French women's basketball team shot 6 of 13 three-pointers, while the Chinese women's basketball team shot 3 of 7 three-pointers. Coach Zheng Wei repeatedly stressed during the timeout, "Don't mess up the defense. ”
In the first half, the French women's basketball team was 25-14 better than the Chinese women's basketball team, of which the frontcourt rebounds were 11-4 ahead.
In the second half, the Chinese women's basketball team, which was behind the score, still played hard, and the French women's basketball team's close defense and excellent physical fitness made it difficult for the Chinese women's basketball team to easily get a chance to shoot, while the French women's basketball team, which was leading by a large score, could still hit three points repeatedly. At the end of the third quarter, the French women's basketball team led the Chinese women's basketball team 70-36.
In the end, the Chinese women's basketball team failed to achieve a counterattack and lost with a score of 50-82.
After this game, the Chinese women's basketball team will play against the last opponent of the qualifying round, the Puerto Rico women's basketball team, at 19 o'clock on the evening of February 11.