WCBA 7/2008 - Bayi Telecom 92, Jiangsu 86

Who is #16? Jiangsu's little foreign girl?

One of the rules of translating off foreign websites is "the farther you stray from your home language, the more likely errors are to creep in." China and the United States are half a planet away, and my knowledge of Chinese Script could be written on a peppercorn.

Yet I have learned, and perservered. However, mistakes crop up when you're reading a schedule made up of entirely Chinese characters. The active part of translation provides further peril: what do you call the team that Google Translate calls "August 1st"? How do you decipher Chinese characters into foreign names? What is the difference between Liaoning (a good team) vs. Liaoyang (a team not as good as Liaoninng)?

So last week: I screwed up. I wrote that Jiangsu had played and beaten Bayi Telecom - the Yankees of the WCBA. That was incorrect. They beat Liaoning - the Red Sox of the WCBA. It was close - Bayi Telecom and Liaoning have been the only teams that have won WCBA championships. Liaoning was the team that broke Bayi Telecom's run, and Bayi Telecom only regained the championship last year after a two-year layoff.

However, one of the rules of blogging is that "mistakes can be fixed very easily". You go back to the original post, swap out "Bayi Telecom" for "Liaoning", change some text and no one need be the wiser. What it means, however, was that Jiangsu didn't beat the best team in the WCBA last week - just the second banana.

So how did Jiangsu (4-3) fare against the elite Bayi Telecom team (6-1)...for real? They came close...but not close enough. A third quarter where Jiangsu only scored 13 points doomed them to a 92-86 loss on the road.

The boxscore is here.

Jiangsu kept it close, and actually led Bayi Telecom at halftime, 42-41. In the third quarter, Jiangsu would fall behind and faced a 65-55 deficit going into the fourth quarter, where a mini-comeback fell short and allowed Bayi Telecom to get their sixth win in seven games.

It was a high shooting game that would have put many WNBA games to shame. The visiting Jiangsu shot 56 percent compared to Bayi Telecom's 51 percent - and to add to that, Jiangsu hit 13 three pointers.

In rebounding, however, Jiangsu got waxed. Bayi Telecom dominated, and Jiangsu could only muster up four measly offensive rebounds the entire game. They also turned the ball over 20 times compared to Bayi Telecom's 14 times. They would send Bayi Telecom to the free throw line 21 times, and Bayi Telecom would shoot 85 percent from the free throw line. Jiangsu shot better, but Bayi Telecom did the fundamental things that won them the game.

For home team Bayi Telecom, only seven players took the floor. They only needed seven. Chen Nan led all scorers with a 32 point, 16 rebound game for Bayi Telecom. Zhang Xiaoni scored 22 points, and Sui Feifei scored 20 points. Sui Feifei briefly played with the Sacramento Monarchs in 2005.

As for Jiangsu, Ann Strother led all players with 19 points and four rebounds, including shooting 5 for 7 from behind the arc. She shot 7 for 11 for the entire game (but she also made five turnovers). Bian Lan scored 17 points, and Xu Song added 13 points and led all Jiangsu players with eight.

However, for those of you who got to this point: there is a gallery! A young Chinese blogger decided to post some pictures of her visit to Bayi Telecom-Jiangsu. According to the blogger, attendance was free and the game was well attended. Ann Strother was called "Jiangsu's foreign little girl", which I assume is a term of endearment.

(Note: the rules for those playing along at home:

北京 Beijing
江苏 Jiangsu
广东 Guangdong
云南 Yunan
上海 Shanghai
八一 Bayi Telecom
沈部 Liaoyang
河南 Henan
哈药 Hayao
山东 Shangdong
辽宁 Liaoning
浙江 Zhejiang

It helps to have a key written out instead of in your head.)