On June 25, Beijing time, the 2024 FIBA U18 Women's Basketball Asian Cup continued, on this day, the Chinese team ushered in the second opponent of the group stage, the New Zealand team, after four quarters of competition, the Chinese women's basketball U18 defeated the opponent 90-68, ushering in two consecutive wins! Among them, Zhang Ziyu, who is 2.24 meters tall, scored a maximum of 36 points in the game and became the number one contributor to the Chinese team's victory.
A total of 16 teams participated in this competition, divided into two levels, A and B, with 8 teams at each level, and the A level is the overall strength of the team, of which Australia, Malaysia, Chinese Taipei, and South Korea are divided into Group A of the A level; China, Japan, Indonesia and New Zealand are in Group B of Group A, with Australia the defending champions.
According to the rules of the tournament, the two groups in the A division will each play a single round-robin, and the group winners will directly advance to the semi-finals, and the teams that win the second and third places in the group will play a cross-elimination round, and the winner will advance to the semi-finals. The top four teams in this competition will directly qualify for the 2025 FIBA U19 Women's Basketball World Cup.
The primary goal of the Chinese women's basketball U18 in this competition is to get the ticket to next year's Women's Basketball U19 World Cup, and the ultimate goal is definitely to compete for the championship, because after all, we are fighting at home, occupying the right time and place!
The most important thing is that we have a "Big Mac" level player in our team, she is Zhang Ziyu, who is 17 years old and has an astonishing height of 2.24 meters! Not to mention the 18-year-old age group, even in the adult competition, female basketball players with a height of more than 2.20 meters are definitely rare. Judging from the past two games of the Chinese team, as long as Zhang Ziyu appears on the court, he will completely crush the opponent.
In the first game of the Chinese team against Indonesia, Zhang Ziyu came off the bench for 13 minutes and 03 seconds, and scored the second highest score of the team with 19 points on 9 shots, helping the Chinese women's team defeat Indonesia 109-50 by 59 points!
In the second game of the Chinese team against New Zealand in the group stage on June 25, Zhang Ziyu's performance was terrifying, starting the game for 22 minutes and 46 seconds, scoring a game-high 36 points on 16-of-20 shooting. If the Chinese team does not have Zhang Ziyu, it will be really difficult for the Chinese women's basketball U18 to defeat New Zealand in this campaign, which is Zhang Ziyu's huge role for the current Chinese team!
In fact, although Zhang Ziyu performed very well, but after all, he is only 17 years old, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in his skills, the reason why he showed a dominant performance in the first two games is that his height is really too high, as long as Zhang Ziyu gets the ball under the basket, the defender is completely useless, Zhang Ziyu only needs to put the ball in the basket, it's that simple!
Through the experience of this competition, Zhang Ziyu has every hope of becoming the leader of the Chinese women's basketball team in the future, like the current Chinese women's basketball team's main players Han Xu and Li Yueru, who have grown up from this event. So we have reason to believe that Zhang Ziyu, who is currently more than 2.20 meters tall, definitely has hope to become the core of the Chinese women's basketball team in the future!
Looking back at this competition, the Japanese team, which is in the same group as the Chinese women's basketball team U18, also performed very strongly, and also won two consecutive games in the first two games. beat New Zealand by 37 points 84-47 in the first game; In the second game, it beat Indonesia by 51 points 80-29, and it is not difficult to see that the Japanese women's basketball team U18 is very strong on the defensive end, and the opponent has controlled the opponent's score below 50 points in the past two games, and even allowed Indonesia to score only 2 points in a single quarter, which is indeed too strong.
At 7 p.m. on June 26, the final between China and Japan is bound to be highly anticipated, and the two teams will compete fiercely for the top spot in the group. Needless to say, the characteristic of the Chinese team is Zhang Ziyu's dominance.
But after all, Zhang Ziyu can't play the whole game, so it's quite good for a tall man to play two quarters, and in the time when Zhang Ziyu didn't play, if the Chinese team can bite the score, then it is still very promising to beat the Japanese team.
There is never a shortage of highlights in the confrontation between China and Japan, and the current explosion of Zhang Ziyu makes many fans look forward to seeing the classic scene of Zhang Ziyu crushing the Japanese team!
I hope that the players of the Chinese women's basketball U18 can continue the winning streak, defend the honor of Chinese basketball on our home court, defeat the Japanese team on the evening of the 26th, directly advance to the semifinals as the group leader, and get the ticket to next year's U19 Women's Basketball World Cup, let us look forward to Zhang Ziyu bringing us big surprises again!