China coach aims for D’Tigress victory in exhibition series

China coach Gong Luming wants to win all their games against Nigeria’s D’Tigress in a pre-World Cup exhibition series. This follows Wang Siyu’s four free throws that helped China come back from eight points down to beat Nigeria 69-65 in Haikou on Sunday.

This match was the second of three warm-up games between the teams before the FIBA Women’s World Cup in Berlin next month. D’Tigress have now lost both of their matches with China. They also lost 70-67 in the first game on Friday.

Tang Ziting made China’s first three-pointer early in the last period. She then hit another shot from long range to tie the game at 54-54. Centre Zhang Ziyu played strongly in the paint, and Wang’s free throws at the end secured the win for China.

Tang finished with nine points, while Zhang was the top scorer with a double-double of 23 points and 13 rebounds. Zhang had only six points in the first half after scoring 24 in Friday’s game.

Nigeria used strong defense to stay competitive in a tough first half that saw 11 lead changes. The score was tied at 33-33 at halftime.

The African champions made five three-pointers in the third quarter, taking a 54-46 lead into the last period. China had 19 turnovers, five more than Nigeria, in a match that stayed close until the end.

After the game, Gong said that playing against a strong Nigerian team was a good experience for his younger players ahead of the World Cup.

"As seven of their players competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, it was a good test for our young team," he said.

"We need to build chemistry and draw experience from these games. We need to connect well against such a high-pressure defense. Compared with the first game, we improved our rebounding today, but our turnovers were still high. We hope to improve that in the next game."

The games in China are part of D’Tigress’ five-stop preparation program called "Road to Berlin." This program started with games in the USA from July 29 to August 2 before the team traveled to Haikou.

Both teams will face each other for the third and final time in Foshan on Wednesday. After that, Nigeria will move its training camp to Tenerife, Spain. They will play more matches against the hosts and Belgium from August 15 to 24. The team will then head to Zaragoza for games against Mali and Puerto Rico from August 25 to September 3.

Finally, D’Tigress will go to Berlin for the FIBA Women’s World Cup, which is set for September 4 to 13. They have been placed in Group B with South Korea, Hungary, and France.