There
are those rare moments when Fadi El Khatib has failed to return a match-winning
performance. And unfortunately in this competition it came a day after the
33-year-old had convinced the FIBA Asia Executive Committee into
choosing Lebanon as the host of the 27th FIBA Asia Championship.
It as
Qatar indeed all the way right from the time Mohammed Yousuf Mohammed put them
ahead on the scoreboard in the early part. The winners of this event in its
inaugural edition in 2004, when it was called the FIBA Asia Stankovic Cup,
didn’t fell behind after that.
Lebanon
did manage to level the scores after that – on two occasions towards the end of
the second period – but Trey Johnson turned in the best performance of his
naturalization so far accounting for 13 of Qatar’s points in the third period
to put the GCC champions in a comfortable position.
Johnson,
who had missed Qatar’s first three games in the Prelim Round here, went on to
finish with a tournament-high 28 points, with a 13/21 in field shooting, 5
rebounds and 7 assists.
“I have
maintained throughout that Trey makes a difference. Today we saw how huge that
could be,” Wisman said.
“There
are certainly more options in our guard the instance Trey starts the game and
it was there for all to see,” the American who might face his former team Japan
in the semifinals.
The
winners of the Japan-China game will complete the semifinal line-up and take on
Qatar.
El
Khatib had a dozen points and 9 rebounds along with 5 assists, but looked far
from his usual dominating self.
“Well it
was one of those days when nothing works for you. This is a game of basketball
after all,” rued
Lebanon
coach Ghassan Sarkis.
-Source: FIBA Asia
No comments:
Post a Comment