Hong Kong Dashes Cambodia's Dream

Cambodia to face Macao for 7th/8th place playoff on Monday

Cambodia’s dream of winning honors at the 4th China-Asean Invitational Basketball Tournament was finally punctured on Sunday following defeat to Hong Kong in the first playoff to determine the 5th/6th place win.

The Cambodian team lost to Chinese Taipei 103-96 on Saturday to miss a place for the Semi Finals and was pitched against 4th place finisher from Group A.

According to the tournament rule, the 3rd Place finisher in Group B takes on 4th place finisher in Group A to qualify for the 5th/6th place in the 11 team tournament. Malaysia and Singapore finished top 2 in group A while China Guangxi and Chinese Taipei finished as top 2 in group B with all four teams moving on to play in the semi finals.

Cambodia haven finished third in group B were pitched against fourth placed Hong Kong from group B on Sunday but the Hong Kong side were two strong for them losing 62-82

It was Hong Kong who started like a train with great intent and purpose. Hong Kong began the game brightly, breaking quickly and keeping Cambodia on the back foot for the first Quarter finishing 15-26.

Cambodia's attempt to come back in the Second quarter were met with stiff resistance from Hong Kong with the trio of Pek Mith, Boroth Thach, and Sop Oeun failing to inspire the team as they did in the group stage. They failed to combine well with Phal Sophors, Chom Chanborey and Meas Rithyravuth allowing Hong Kong to take advantage by extending the lead in the Second quarter to 24 points to go into the half time break.

After the half time break, Cambodia tried to pull their strings together by closing the gap to 10 points with 3 minutes left on the clock in the third Quarter. With Cambodia relying heavily on their foreign trio who obviously seem to have over worked themselves so hard in Saturday’s Game against Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong proved to be a mountain too hard to climb for Cambodia as they began to wriggle their way past Cambodia with ease to end the third quarter 66 -50 in favor of Hong Kong.

As the fourth quarter wore on, Cambodia could not find the inspiration needed to push on as they seem to have lost purpose, guile, endeavor and enterprise that saw them record wins over Macao and Vietnam in earlier rounds. They allowed Hongkong to find space and time to drive home points after points especially from distance to extend their lead to 82-62 to win the tie.

“Our team gave their best, the Foreign players helped a lot but it seems we are yet to recover from yesterday’s lose which affected the team today" Says Leader of Delegation Top Panha "Our players have given their best in this tournament but we ran out of strength as we had to contend with so many games” explained Mak Chanphirun, Secretary General of Cambodia Basketball Federation “ Most of our players are playing at this level for the first time and were a bit nervous but we surely learn't a big lesson from this tournament and hopefully when we get back to Phnom Penh, we can prepare better for the SEA games" he remarked.

Secretary General of Cambodia Basketball Federation, Mr Mak Champhirun lauded the performance of the team and noted that the foreign players need to play more with the local players to improve the team. "Our Team is improving despite the lose, we need to play more together, the foreign players are beginning to understand each other but we are not yet 100% playing together as a team" he stated. "We had some injury worries too which slowed down our game, Monh Putratana had a dislocated finger, Sopouen Ouen is suffering from some muscle strains and Lav Chhaydany has a groin strain hence we are short in numbers.” He added

"We lost today because the Hong Kong side were very fast and are in shooting from far, this we have to work well on our defending before we got to the SEA games" he enthused.

In the other Playoff, China Pinguo defeated Macao to set up a replay with Hongkong for the 5th/6th place playoffs while Cambodia will now meet Macao for the 7th and 8th finish on Monday 31st

Saturday Results.
China Pinguo 84 - 88 Singapore
Laos 56 vs 58 Myanmar
Hong Kong 74 vs 86 Malaysia
GROUP B
Cambodia 96 vs 103 Taipei
China Guanxi 76 vs 62 Macao

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