In today's online environment, the most popular is extreme. When you fall in love with someone, you are God; If you don't like a person, he's a ghost. For example, Zhou Qi back then, such as Zhang Zhenlin later, maybe Zhang Ziyu will be added to this list in the future.
In the just-concluded 2024 FIBA U18 Women's Basketball Asian Cup, Zhang Ziyu played 5 games, from a substitute at the beginning to an absolute main force and tactical core later, and finally became the most valuable player of the tournament. Chinese fans rejoiced, and the joke of "adults beating children" swept the Internet.
However, in the finals, although Zhang Ziyu still had outstanding statistics, scoring 42 points and 14 rebounds, his shooting rate was only 50%, and he was quite uncomfortable by Australia.
Such an adversary as Australia should be thanked. After this U18 Asian Cup, Zhang Ziyu's advantages were shown, and his shortcomings were also exposed. How to make up for each other's weaknesses in the future will be the core problem that Zhang Ziyu and even Chinese basketball need to solve.
Fans should also realize that even in women's basketball, a center with super height can't do everything.
Needless to say, Zhang Ziyu's advantages are obvious, the height advantage is obvious, and the footsteps and feel under the basket have also been strictly trained, and there is almost no solution for teams with slightly weaker physical or technical conditions, even if it is an Asian powerhouse such as Japan and South Korea, they can only bet on the feel at the same age. We've talked about this countless times.
However, as we had anticipated before the final, Australia, like New Zealand that we had met before, limited Zhang's play on the offensive end to a considerable extent, and made excellent use of her defensive shortcomings to hit extremely high interior shots.
The first is the offense. Australia's approach is the same as New Zealand's, first pushing her as far away from the box as possible with her power, and then taking the ball at any time to either break the ball or increase her shooting difficulty and physical exertion.
Zhang Ziyu was extremely uncomfortable with this at the beginning of the game, making only 1 of 5 shots. Although it has improved since then, the full-court shooting rate is only 50%. Obviously, although she also grabbed 10 offensive rebounds, her scoring efficiency and physical exertion were far higher than usual - by the way, Zhang Ziyu also has good playmaking ability on the line, but once she gets to the low post, she becomes a black hole of ball possession, and she will hardly get the ball out, and the team will not be able to punish Australia's aggressive wrapping strategy.
In defense, Zhang Ziyu has exposed more problems and needs to improve more.
Basket protection - originally thought that her height to protect the box would not be a problem, but in fact, due to her slow movement, she did not have much of an impact on Australia's interior shooting percentage, although center Somfayi only made 3 of 15 shots, Sears made up for this hole with 12 shots, and Australia's interior shooting percentage was even higher than that of Japan in the semi-finals.
Rebounds - originally thought that Australia's rebounding advantage would be greatly reduced under the influence of Zhang Ziyu, but in fact, although Zhang Ziyu had 14 rebounds, 10 of them were basically the result of his own misses, and there were only 4 defensive rebounds. What does it mean that China has 19 total defensive rebounds and Australia has 17 offensive rebounds? This means that Australia can get possession back for every two throws. In the end, the Chinese team lost by as many as 27 rebounds, and the rebounding performance was not even as good as that of Japan the day before.
Of course, this is only the U18 game, and Zhang Ziyu is also participating in an international competition for the first time, and everything is still unknown. But this is only the U18 Asian Cup, not the U18 World Youth Championships, there are still many teams in the world that have the ability to wrestle with Australia, and it is blind and irresponsible to expect Zhang Ziyu to be how he must be.
At least in Australia's view, the best player can be Zhang Ziyu, but the final winner is not the Chinese team. I wonder if this will satisfy discerning Chinese fans?
Text/Hubei Daily reporter Guo Xiaoming sent from Shenzhen map/official website of the event