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Yi Jianlian leads China to beat Russia 86-61

Xinhua, July 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

Yi Jianlian's 23 points lifted China over Russia 86-61 here on Friday at the 2015 Sino-European Men's Basketball CHampionship.

Yi only played 18 minutes to earn a match-high 23 points in two quarters, as well as a tied game-high seven rebounds. Chinese team, who took this championship as a warm-up tournament for September's Asia Championship, committed 22 turnovers in the game, 18 of which came in the first half, and also missed 14 free-throws.

A 9-0 run in the later first period gave China a 20-11 lead. The host outscored Russia 17-12 to close the first half at 37-23. The Russian team scored four three-points in the third quarter, which is as many as China's three-pointers of the whole match, but only seeing China won the period by 26-15. The two sides tied at 23-23 in the final period.

Stanislav Kraynov led Russia with 18 points and four assists. Mikhail Startsev helped with 15 points and three steals.

Yi Jianlian became the only Chinese player who scored in double-digits. Dingyan Yuhang finished with a second team-high nine points and a team-high four assists. Zhou Qi took eight points and grabbed seven rebounds. The whole Chinese team is 4-of-12 at the three-pointers line. But they outrebounded Russia 53-27.

"It's a very interesting match," said Gong Luming, head coach of Chinese team. "Players want to speed up, which brings in too much turnovers. But I'm glad to see that the young players quickly made changes in the second half and only had four turnovers after the first half."

"But one thing I don't like is that our opponent took 12 offensive rebounds. We have advantage in height. That should not happen." added Gong.

"Chinese team played very tough," said Russian team's head coach Anatoly Laptev, who was assistant coach of the Russia team at 2015 Summer Universiade. "We could not stop Yi Jianlian. A key player like Yi, that's what we need."

China will play against Italian Under-22 team on Saturday while Russia will meet Ireland. Italy thrashed Ireland 70-42 earlier on Friday. Enditem