WCBA Quarterfinals 2/2008 - Beijing 65, Guangdong 55

Who's that American girl in the front row?

You only need to win two of three in the opening round of the WCBA Quarterfinals to move on, and with their win over Guangdong, Beijing will advance to the WCBA Semifinals.

All of the higher ranked teams won the second and deciding game of their first round series. The semifinals start Wednesday and are a best-of-three affair. Beijing will end up playing either Bayi Telecom or Liaoning in the semifinals, and the first game will be played in Beijing.

It looks like Google Translate and WCBA have declared peace. The translated boxscore is here.

Guangdong took the lead they needed early on, and led after the first quarter 19-15. After that, Beijing's talent came to the top. They led 34-31 at halftime and held Guangdong to just 11 third quarter points. Guangdong would get to within three points in the final two minutes, 55-52, but Beijing would score 10 points in the final two minutes to close the game.

Beijing had the shooting edge, hitting 44 percent of its attempted field goals compared to 41 percent for Guangdong. Guangdong hit more field goals from 3-point range, but Beijing took more shots.

Beijing had the edge in offensive rebounding and in visits to the free throw line. The critical problem was Chasity Melvin who scored seven points and 10 rebounds in 39 minutes (she's listed under "Richard Nesti") but made six turnovers and only shot 28 percent.

For Beijing, Zhang Fan led with 21 points and seven rebounds as well as three block shots. Seven other players scored for Beijing including Jennifer Lacy, who started for Beijing and scored seven points (but committed four fouls) in 30 minutes of play.

Song Xiayun led all Guangdong scorers with 17 points. Wei Wei would also score nine points and six rebounds for Guangdong.

Funny, for a quarterfinal match, you think there would pictures all over in a country as large as China. Oh well. I got a picture from a lone Chinese blogger, so thank you! The larger version is here, and in high resolution, Jennifer Lacy looks really nice.