Photo from Fiba.com
CHANGSHA CITY, China – As expected, defending champion Iran breezed through its first three assignments in the Fiba Asia Championship, leading all Group A qualifiers that will merge with those coming from Group B that will include Gilas Pilipinas.
South Korea and the Filipinos are expected to easily make it through to the next phase with light assignments to close out Round 1, but the same cannot be said of Chinese Taipei, the last member of the Final Four in the 2013 Championships.
The Taiwanese, who dealt the Filipinos one of only two defeats in Manila for a World Cup slot, formally bowed out after taking close losses to Lebanon and Kazakhstan.
Chinese Taipei will still clash with Qatar, and a win will not do the Taiwanese any good since they will fall into a tie with either the Lebanese or the Kazakhs and will lose out in the quotient.
Korea is at 1-1 and is polishing off a rout of Singapore as of this writing on Friday and will finish No. 2 in its group behind China, which pulled out a thrilling 76-73 victory over the Koreans on Thursday night.
Palestine, which rocked the tournament on opening day Wednesday with a 75-73 upset of the Philippines, remains perfect at 2-0 after a 90-69 rout of Kuwait.
The Palestinians and their superstar center Sani Sakakini will be closing out their first round schedule against Hong Kong also on Wednesday, with the top ranking in Group A staked in that game.
Iran, with a solid 1-2-3 punch in Hamed Haddadi, Mahdi Kamrani and Samad Nikha Bahrami, finished its first round assignment with an 80-point rout of Malaysia. Its victories over Japan and India were by a combined margin of 60 points.
The tournament is indeed a letdown as far as the Taiwanese are concerned.
They made it all the way to the Final Four in Manila and were blown off the court Iran. In the bronze medal match, they also couldn’t keep up with the Koreans, who bagged the third and last slot to Spain.