Incheon: Qatar advanced to the quarter-final rounds of the men’s basketball competition at the Asian Games after edging Japan by a solitary point in their final Group F preliminary at the Hwaseong Sports Complex yesterday.
Japan, too, made the grade.
Qatar, whose best finish in the Asian Games is second place eight years ago in Doha, had to overcome a few nerve-wracking moments in the final quarter before clinching a 72-71 thriller.
Daoud Mousa led the charge for Qatar with 15 points, nine of which came from three-pointers, while Erfan Ali poured in 13 and Khalid Sulaiman Abdi had 12.
Captain Yaseen Musa, who was nursing a shoulder niggle during the build-up, finally got to see some action as he played for 16 minutes to score four points.
Japan, who surprisingly have never won the Asian Games gold medal so far, were up 14-12 after the first five minutes but Qatar caught up to take a slender 22-21 lead at the end of the first quarter.
The second quarter saw Qatar pull clear 39-31, but the Japanese, led by Naoto Tsuji, who scored a game-high 19 points, fought back strongly, aided in no small measure by their rivals’ tendency to relax once they felt they had the match in their grip.
That almost proved Qatar’s undoing as Japan scored a whopping 25 points, which allowed them to get within touching distance at 58-56 by the end of the third quarter. The final quarter was a battle of attrition with points hard to come by, and although Qatar managed to stay ahead most of the time, Japan could have upset their applecart but for a a few missed chances in the final five minutes.
“We are in the quarter-finals and that is what that matters,” said captain Musa.
“We showed today that we can come through tight situations which would help our confidence tremendously.
Coach Vasileios also heaved a sigh of relief.
“The match could have gone either way but thanks to our defence in the final session we managed to pull through,” he said.
Qatar will take on the Philippines today in their first Group H match of the round robin quarter-finals. South Korea and Kazakhstan are the other teams in their group.
FIBA Asia champions Iran, defending Asian Games champions China, Japan and Mongolia constitute Group G.
The Philippines are four-time Asian Games champions having won successive gold medals in 1951, 1954, 1958 and 1962 before China and South Korea started taking a fancy to the game.
However, the winning streak was however broken not by China or South Korea but by Israel in 1966.
Israel are no longer part of the Asian Games set up and play most of their sport in Europe. QOC
