On June 30, Beijing time, the U18 Women's Basketball Asian Cup entered the last match day, and the final at 6 o'clock this afternoon was played by the Chinese team against the Australian team. In the last U18 Women's Asian Basketball Championship, the Chinese team lost to Australia in the final and ranked second. Now with Zhang Ziyu, the Chinese team aims to take revenge on Australia at home and reach the top of Asia again.
The Chinese team won all three games in the group stage, beating Indonesia 109-50, New Zealand 90-68, and Japan 97-81. The Chinese team locked the first place in the group and directly advanced to the semifinals, and the Chinese team defeated the South Korean team 79-61 in yesterday's semifinals, and the Chinese team successfully advanced to the finals. Australia also made it four straight wins to advance to the finals, beating Malaysia 124-38 in the group stage, South Korea 85-52, Chinese Taipei 90-67, and narrowly beating Japan 68-63 in yesterday's semi-finals.
Zhang Ziyu, who represented the national team for the first time in the World Series, averaged 33.3 points, 12.5 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game in four games, ranking first in the scoring and rebounding charts of the game, and the efficiency value was also a fault lead. The Chinese team was able to achieve four consecutive wins to advance to the finals, Zhang Ziyu's contribution is obvious to all, with or without her, the Chinese team is completely two teams, Zhang Ziyu, who is 2.23 meters tall, has unmatched dominance at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends, as long as she gets the ball on the inside, the opponent can only look at the ball and sigh. Not only does she have a huge height advantage, but she also has a soft inside finishing touch, and she has a good strategy, and it is foreseeable that Zhang Ziyu, who is only 17 years old, will become the leader of the Chinese women's basketball team in the future.
The strength of the Australian team should not be underestimated, they have excellent physical fitness, the team has as many as 7 people over 1.85 meters tall, in yesterday's semi-final with the Japanese team, the Australian team even if there were 28 mistakes in the whole game, but they were still able to win in the end, because their average height is a cut higher than the Japanese team, and the rebounding aspect of the Japanese team 65:28 played the Japanese team, and the Japanese team's small and fast style of play was finally defeated under Australia's huge physical advantage. Australia's leader Somfeld averaged 21 points and 10.3 rebounds in four games of the tournament, second only to Zhang Ziyu in the scoring and rebounding rankings.
The Chinese team sitting at home has a great hope of completing revenge and finally winning the championship, because Zhang Ziyu is there, she is the biggest confidence of the Chinese team to win the championship, even if the height of the center of the Australian team has reached 1.92 meters, but it is still not enough to see in front of Zhang Ziyu, Zhang Ziyu is still an inexplicable existence on the field. In the final against Australia, the most important thing is that the defenders can safely give the ball to Zhang Ziyu and reduce mistakes. In addition, according to the experience of the previous games, Zhang Ziyu in the rest stage of other players to be able to stabilize and lose less points, the coaching staff to consider the lineup when Zhang Ziyu is not present, because throughout the previous games of the Chinese team, Zhang Ziyu as soon as the Chinese team scored, there was no backbone on the field to play very chaotic, and the opponent took the opportunity to narrow the difference, only Zhang Ziyu re-put on the battlefield to stabilize the situation.
It is worth mentioning that the revenge battle of the Chinese U18 women's basketball final will still not be broadcast live on CCTV, and friends who want to watch the live broadcast can follow this game on Penguin Sports or FIBA official website. In the end, I hope that the Chinese team can take revenge on Australia at home and finally win the championship.