Makoto Hiejima finished with a perfect 100 percent record from the field as Japan put a huge dent in China’s hopes of retaining their Asian Games basketball crown with a shock 79-72 win yesterday.
Hiejima hit nine from nine two-point attempts and one from one from outside the arc in his match-leading 23-point haul at Hwaseong Gymnasium.
His only blemish was that he managed only two out of three from the free-throw line.
With Japan almost certain to beat minnows Mongolia in their last quarter-final Group G match today, it means China face the daunting prospect of having to beat Iran, the pre-tournament favorites, today to have any chance of making it to the last four on points difference.
Iran hammered Japan 82-59 on Friday and crushed Mongolia 107-69 yesterday to top the group.
China have contested every Asian Games final since 1978, winning seven golds and two silvers, and failure to get to the last four — only the top two from Group G will progress — would signal a changing of the guard in Asian basketball.
Iran have not lost yet in Incheon and will be a daunting prospect for an inexperienced China side who are rebuilding under coach Gong Liuming after their defeat to South Korea at last year’s FIBA Asian Championship.
Iran’s outstanding center Hamed Haddadi, formerly of the Phoenix Suns and Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA, has been the player of the tournament so far.
The bad news for China is that he now plies his trade for Qingdao DoubleStar Eagles in the Chinese Basketball Association, so will know his young opponents inside out.
“China is one of the best teams in Asia. They have a good basketball league and great players,” Iran captain Nikkhah Bahrami Samad said yesterday after the win over Mongolia. “I know the Chinese have ... recruited young players. That doesn’t mean it will be easy.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier