WCBA 2/2008 - Beijing 84, Yunan 74

Zhang Wei looks for, and finds, the basket for Beijing

Beijing (1-1) hit the road looking for their first win of the season, and they found it against Yunan (0-2), winning 84-74.

The translated version of the boxscore is here.

The key to Beijing's victory was getting off to a fast start in the first quarter. At the end of the first, Beijing led 29-16. That allowed Beijing to lead 48-38 at the half, a lead which Beijing extended by four in the third quarter. Yunan could simply not come back.

Yunan outshot Beijing 60 percent to 47 percent. How do you lose by shooting 60 percent? Very simple - don't take any shots. Yunan took 46 shots total in the game and only four three pointers. Beijing, on the other hand, took 67 shots. Beijing outrebounded Yunan 32-19, indicating that Beijing was just too strong defensively for Yunan to handle. They made fewer turnovers, and even though they sent Yunan to the line 26 times, both teams hit the same number of free throws.

Zhang Wei led Beijing with 26 points, followed by Zhang Fan with 23 points, and Zhang Lin with 16 points. (Zhang Central Station in Beijing, it seems.) Jennifer Lacy would start for Beijing, but would only play 20 minutes and only score eight points with a single rebound. Whereas the three Zhangs mentioned (there's another Zhang I'm skipping) had 16 rebounds between them.

The leading player for Yunan was a foreign player by the name of "Walter希斯蒂格林". I have seen her listed all sorts of way - as "Walt GREEN" for example. She is listed as "foreign aid from the United States, 5, was born in 1983, 1.92 meters, 97.5 kilograms. Have effect as well as the WNBA league in Europe, the defensive player, good rebounds." I don't even have a birth date for her, since the Chinese don't. It's not Tangela Smith, since she was born in 1977. Your guess is as good as mine. In any event, she scored 26 points and led Yunnan. She went 10 for 10 shooting, and didn't attempt a single three point shot. She has to be a power forward or center.

Cao Bette also contribued 19 points for Yunnan.

Up next - the home opener against 2-0 Ningbo on Saturday. Pics will come when I can find them. Most of the Chinese WCBA news is about how great "Mimi Brown" is.