Guangdong beats PLA to men's basketball final

JINAN, East China, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Defending champion PLA (People's Liberation Army) suffered a sour defeat by Guangdong 95-103 as host Shangdong muscled out Jiangsu 79-60 to enter the final in the men's basketball at the 11th Chinese National Games here on Tuesday.

The PLA side, a powerhouse in National Games, won five consecutive titles in a row in the previous five tournaments. But this time, PLA found their dominance overturned by the star-studded Guangdong.

PLA shrugged off a 17 points deficit in the third quarter to level the score 84-84 before Zhu Fangyu of Guangdong missed a potential winner in the last moment of the regular time. However Guangdong controled the rythm of the overtime with 19-11 and sealed the victory 103-95

Wang Zhizhi, ace player of PLA pocketed a game high 35 points and 13 rebounds, including 8 in the overtime. While Zhu Fangyu topped Guangdong with 26 and Wang Shipeng added 22.

Guangdong will fight for the first National Games title against host Shandong in Wednesday's final, after the host trounced Jiangsu76-60 in the other semifinal.

In the first half the Jiangsu side had great trouble piercing Shandong's tight defence, with their national team point guard Hu Xuefeng finished empty-handed. Former NBA center Menk Bateer, who used to play in Denver Nuggets and San Antonio Spurs, collected 12 of his 15 points including two three pointers to give host Shandong a 44-26 lead before the half-time break.

"We have some inexperienced young players in the squad and we wasted too many shooting opportunities in the first half. Although we did a good job in the third, then it was too hard for us to makeup the deficit," said Tang Zhengdong, center of Jiangsu who scored 20 and notched 11 rebounds. The Jiangsu side was off-rebounded 34-46 and only shot 18.7 percent from behind the arc, with only two double digits scorers.

With an eye on the preparations for the final, Shandong fielded a second string team in most of the final quarter, but Jiangsu still failed to narrow the gap.

"We have already made history as we are getting closer to our goal. We will carry on without any burden in the final and try our best to claim the title," said Shangdong coach Gong Xiaobin.