China and Qatar set for basketball face off

The dream final will now become reality. Gold medal favourites and last year's Asian Championship winners China will play host country Qatar in the men's basketball final on Friday 15 December, after both teams won contrasting semifinal games on Wednesday.

After an early scare, China cruised to a comprehensive 86-58 victory over Jordan at Sport City. There was much more excitement in the evening's second game as Qatar squeezed past IR Iran 67-64 in a hard-fought encounter which swung one way and then the other.

Having accounted for IR Iran by 17 points earlier in the tournament, Qatar entered its first Asian Games semifinal favoured to progress. A nervous start saw both team miss a combined seven field goal attempts, IR Iran opened the scoring and raced to an early 16-4 lead to silence the home crowd, which included HH The Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani.

Qatar shot a horrible one from 15 attempts from the field early in the quarter before a three point basket from Saad Abdulrahman Ali seemed to spark them into action and put them 9-16 down at the end of the first quarter.

Qatar scored the opening five points of the second quarter in a scrappy and error-riddled game that also saw some outstanding defence contribute to a halftime score of 25-24 favouring IR Iran. Ali scored 12 points in the third quarter alone as Qatar found its rhythm in offence, sinking 29 points in the quarter to take a 10 point lead into the final quarter.

Ali's shooting form continued in the fourth before a three-point basket from Aidin Nek Khah Bahrami brought IR Iran to within four points with 1:39 to play. A layup from Mahdi Kamrany in the final 10 seconds to make the score 67-64 was to be the game's final score, completing a historic win for the Qatari team, who headed to the stands to celebrate with fans.

After the game. Qatar's American-born coach Joseph Stiebing said, "A great win, not our best performance but a hard-earned victory. I just told them to play with confidence and that we needed to attack the basket more. Give Iran credit, they really slowed us down."

Looking ahead to the final, "Anytime you want to climb a mountain you climb the best and China is the best. They have a nice combination of players. It'll be a tough game for us." He also added, "We may be a little more athletic than China."

In the earlier game, Jordan came in without key player centre Ayman Dueis. The centre was averaging 9.3 points and 6.3 rebounds per game, but suffered a hamstring tear in the team's win over Kazakhstan in the quarterfinals.

It became apparent early in the game that in the absence of Dueis Jordan would struggle to contain China's twin towers Wang Zhizhi and YI Jianlian. But it was Jordan, making their Asian Games basketball semifinals debut, who took a surprise early lead at 19-13 as the team hit their first four three-point shots in the game.

Jordan's 30 year-old captain Zaid Al Khas was inspirational during their early run, scoring 13 points in the first quarter to see Jordan lead 26-21 at the first break. It was not until the latter stages of the second quarter that a three-pointer from centre Mo Ke gave China the lead for the first time; 31-28.

Another massive three-point shot from Mo on the first half buzzer saw China take a nine-point lead to the main break with the score 41-32 - China outscoring Jordan 20-6 in the second quarter. The three point shot continued to serve the Chinese well during the third quarter as their lead blew out to 64-42.

China's taller players Mo, Yi and Wang Zhizhi continued to dominate in the final quarter as China ran away with the game to win by 28 points. Wang Zhizhi led the team's scoring with 20 points, while 19 year-old Yi was also impressive with 17 points and 10 rebounds.

The only sour note for China was an injury to starting guard Wang Shipeng, who left the court on a stretcher during the third quarter after hurting his knee. Al Khas, who also left the game with three minutes to play with a neck injury, was a standout for Jordan, amassing 27 points and five rebounds in a great solo performance.

After the game, Mo said, "In the first quarter Jordan rebounded many times, which made it difficult for us to score. Before the game the team emphasised this, but we didn't expect them to rebound so well. Jordan fans are well-organised and it affected us to some degree, but I think if we meet Qatar in the next match I think the fans will be louder than today." He remarked before knowing the outcome of the other semifinal.

Jordanian coach Mario Palma said, "We had problems in shooting, we were winning the match when China was playing man-to-man defence, they then switched to a zone defense and this created many problems for us because China has so many big guys."

The men's basketball gold medal match between Qatar and China will take place at Sport City on Friday 15 December at 13:30, it will be preceded by the bronze medal match between Jordan and IR Iran at 11:00.

15th Asian Games, Doha 2006