FIBA Asia Cup: Quarter-Finals Set
With the FIBA Asia Cup preliminary rounds now completed, the competition will head into the Quarter-Final round on Thursday. Finishing the round-robin competition saw two blow-outs, an alley-oop buzzer-beater and the game of the tournament thus far between previously unbeaten Iran and host Japan.
In Group A, the squad from the Philippines had already concluded their four-game prelims, but Lebanon and China had opportunities to capture the top spot in the group with victories. The first match-up of the day pitted China against Macau and despite a 104-46 pounding, China fell just short of moving ahead of the Philippines in the standings with a points for/points against ratio of 1.4125 vs. 1.4120. Lebanon took the lead spot with an 84-49 win over Uzbekistan. Lebanon, Philippines and China all finished with 3-1 records in the competition and all split their matches between each other, so the tie-break goes to the best For/Against ratio, which Lebanon stood on top with a 1.462.
Group B held the hot games of the day and it couldn’t have been scripted any better with the final contest being between Iran and Japan, both undefeated. Just prior to that though, Chinese Taipei and Qatar battled for 39 minutes and 58 seconds, only to have the score read 73 all after Qatar’s Saad Abdulrahman Ali split a pair of free throws after Chinese Taipei’s Chih-Chieh Lin fouled him on the rebound after a missed three-pointer. Taipei called a time out to draw up a play that was going to include a perfectly placed and timed alley-oop from the out-of-bounds play. Easier said than done… Fortunately for Chih-Chieh Lin, he was able to redeem himself for the earlier foul and he positioned the pass perfectly for a flashing Lei Tien, who snuck behind a confused Qatar defense, got the pass and sealed the win with a dunk at the buzzer.
The Quarter-Finals begin on Thursday with today being a rest day. The match-ups are:
11:30 I.R. Iran – Uzbekistan
14:00 Philippines – Chinese Taipei
16:30 Lebanon – Qatar
19:00 Japan – China
| GROUP A FINAL STANDINGS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Results – Sept. 14 Macau – Lebanon – 51-120 Philippines – China – 68-71 Results – Sept. 15 Results – Sept. 16 Results – Sept. 17 Results – Sept. 18 GROUP B FINAL STANDINGS |
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| Results – Sept. 14 India – I.R. Iran – 71-83 Japan– Qatar – 73-69 Results – Sept. 15 Results – Sept. 16 Results – Sept. 17 Results – Sept. 18 |
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And the Oscar goes to China. Where is Borat country?
They used to play nice ball before.