JINAN, China (2nd FIBA Asia U16 Championship for Women): China scored the first five points of the game underlining their supremacy early in the game and cantered their way to a 105-69 win against Chinese Taipei in the bronze medal game on Sunday.

For many aficionados of the sport in China the fact that their favorite team was not playing the gold medal game – an incident occurring after a gap of more than a decade – might have been a bitter to swallow, but Wang Guizhi’s girls showed tremendous character to recover from that debilitating semifinal defeat.

“We wanted to show them (the fans) we are capable of playing good basketball,” the senior most player in China’s team and spearhead Yang Liwei (pic above) said.

Yang herself was at the forefront of the Chinese assault scoring 4 points, collecting 3 rebounds and dishing out 4 assists to put things in control for the team.

“Yesterday’s defeat was difficult to take. It wasn’t easy to sleep last night. And we thought the only way we can make up some amends was to play extremely well today,” Yang said.

“I thought it was my mistake that we lost the game yesterday,” Yang, who had 20 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals in all for the game.

Gong Li had 18 points, Yang Hengyu added 16 and Hu Yueming contributed a dozen points – all of them also pulling down 12 rebounds each.

Chen Wei-an led Taipei with 19 points.

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