XI'AN, July 17 (Xinhua) -- China defeated Senegal 68-53 on Wednesday here at the 2019 China-Senegal Women's international Basketball Challenge.
China set a young formation in the game, Wang Siyu, Wu Tongtong, Wang Xuemeng, Pan Zhenqi and Li Yueru were on the ground at the beginning of the game.
Although Pan helped her team lead a 5-0 spurt with a three-pointer, the young team couldn't find many ways of scoring then. When Li was substituted by Sun Mengran, China's rival took the upper hand in the paint, trailing one point after the first quarter.
China enlarged its advantage to four points before the half. Li grabbed five points in the second quarter, adding five more in the third quarter, helping China lead Senegal 48-34 before the last period.
The host team relaxed a little bit in the fourth quarter, letting its rival narrow the gap to eight. Zhang Ru buried a three-pointer with two minutes and 30 seconds remaining on the clock, giving the host team the the victory.
Li Yueru grabbed 16 points and five rebounds in the game. The rising star said: "It was a tough game, we were a little nervous in the first half, but we made adjustments and won. Our guards took some of pressures off me, I would like to thank my teammates."
China team's head coach Xu Limin told Xinhua that he was satisfied with his young players, although they had low shot percentage and encountered problems of Xs and Os.
"Five players on our World Cup 2018 roster couldn't take part in the game, the young players need time to grow up and gain experiences." Xu said.
"What's more, we need to have better bench players to face the challenge of the Olympic qualifying matches. We need to give chances to young players," the 53-year-old added.
On Friday, China will play against Senegal again in Wuhan, Hubei province.
