WCBA 15/2008 - Henan 79, Beijing 69

Beijing (9-6) took a slight step backward on the road to the WCBA playoffs. Going to Henan (8-7), they would lose by a score of 79-69. The loss keeps Beijing solely in fourth place, but Beijing needs to finish in fourth place or better to be assured of home field advantage in the first round of the playoff quarterfinals.

The translated box score of the game is here.

Looking at the quarter by quarter score, it's the story of Henan slowly extending its lead by fits and starts - Henan won each quarter of the game, but by no more than four points each time. They led 41-36 at haltime, expanded the lead to 59-50 in the third quarter and ended up winning by ten points.

The Beijing coach said (I think) that he was happy with his teams performance, because they fought hard. Henan's coach said that his team was only slightly better than Beijing's in some aspects.

The big part of the story is that Henan managed to pull off the win with only seven players, and the mightiest player of all was Yolanda Griffith. Griffith scored 18 points and 18 rebounds - almost a "double of a double". Four other players scored in double digits for Henan, including Wang Jing with 21 points and five rebounds.

Zhang Fan would lead all Beijing players with 22 points and nine rebounds. Jennifer Lacy would score 15 points and three rebounds for Beijing. The only other player to score in double digits for Beijing was Zhang Wei, who scored 13 points and three rebounds.

There probably won't be pictures. You'd think the WCBA would learn to add a multimedia page to their website.