China lose to Venezuela, failing to make second stage in Basketball World Cup

China lost to Venezuela 72-59 at the Cadillac Arena in Beijing, failing to save their fate in the team's third game in Group A in the FIBA Basketball World Cup. The winner Venezuela joined Poland to make the second stage.

Chinese players obviously still had lingering fear of the excessive-foul problem they suffered in the last game against Poland. Most of those in defense were unwilling to reach out, failing to exert enough pressure on their Venezuelan opponents. As a result, Venezuela grew hot in the first quarter, claiming points from outside and managing to maintain their lead by burying multiple in-your-face or long-distance tough shots in the second quarter.

Yi Jianlian of China reacts during their group phase game against Venezuela in the FIBA Basketball World Cup at the Cadillac Arena in Beijing, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019. [Photo: IC]

By contrast, China's perimeter players were ice cold most of the time, giving Venezuela more reasons to close in to double team, if not triple team China's supposed advantage, Yi Jianlian and Wang Zhelin. Zhou Qi became China's ice breaker from the 3-point line, followed by Yi. However, the team's perimeter engine Guo Ailun still could not find his game and missed all four of his shots.

The other deciding factor that led to the 33-23 score difference in the first half was rebounding. Though Venezuela had disadvantage in height, their players grabbed more rebounds (25-14), especially on the offensive glass (10-5).

The third quarter was not getting any better for China. The strength problem for their players became even more visible: Chinese players grew slower in passing, rebounding, switch and help defense. The only good news was that Venezuela did not inherit their magic touch from the third quarter, which was why the score difference remained 10 points (51-41) before the fourth quarter.

China launched their last counterattack in Q4, going for every loose ball and speeding up the game to take every possible shot. Nonetheless, such late efforts failed to bring much progress – the closest they could get was trailing by seven points. The reason was simple: China just could not put the ball into the basket.

What awaits China are the 17-32 Classification Round on Friday and Sunday against South Korea and Nigeria as well as more reflections over the failure in the tournament.

Other games on Wednesday:

Angola 84-81 the Philippines

Poland 80-63 Cote d'Ivoire

South Korea 66-108 Nigeria

Puerto Rico 67-64 Tunisia

Italy 77-92 Serbia

Russia 61-69 Argentina

Spain 73-65 Iran