China loses to Greece, Yao Ming upset

[Angelo]

BEIJING -- Chinese center Yao Ming roared with anger in the mixed zone after China lost 91-77 to Greece at the men's basketball competition of the Olympic Games in Beijing on Monday.

China finished fourth in Group B and will face Lithuania, leaders of Group A, in the quarterfinals on Wednesday, while Greece to meet Argentina.

"Leave me alone!" Yao roared to the press when he walked into the mixed zone. He didn't receive any interviews before he left.

The Houston Rockets center played only 18:16 minutes, scoring 16 points and grabbing five rebounds.

"It's a hard loss. We were too nervous at the start of the game, " China's head coach Jonas Kaslauskas said.

Talking about the playing time of Yao, he said, "I'm the head coach of the team. I can decide how long a player plays in a game."

Yao vowed to help China qualify for the quarterfinals at the Beijing Olympics, and predicted the sixth-placing finish for China.

China can only finish eighth, same as that of the 2004 Athens Games, if they could not enter the semifinals.

"We were too tired today because we had four hard-fought matches prior to this one. Greece played tough defence, produced lots of steals. They pushed Yao out of the key. We could get the ball to Yao and didn't shoot well from the outside. We scored 24 points in the first half. You cannot win a game when you score like that at the start," Chinese Zhu Fangyu said.

Ioannis Bourousis led Greece with 19 points and nine rebounds while Vasileios Spanoulis adding 19 points and five assists. Antonios Fotsis had 17 points.

Greece's solid defence shut down China's attacking power as the Chinese were 0-out-of-14 from behind the arc and only managed 16 attempts in the field in the first half, with Greece leading by 46-24.

Spanoulis, former Rockets' teammate of Yao Ming, had 13 points in the first half to put Greece into a comfortable lead.

China's outsiders picked up their offence when they buried six out of nine 3-pointers to catch up on 58-48 with a 13-4 run in 3:30 minutes after Yao was substituted out 6:30 left in the third quarter.

The hosts made it 10-point game twice in the fourth quarter. A pair 3-pointers from Wang Zhizhi, who had 14 points and eight rebounds in 25 minutes, made it 75-65 with 6:05 to go and Yi Jianlian's two free-throws closed it on 81-71 with 2:49 left on the clock.

Panagiotis Vasilopoulos silenced the crowds with a 3-pointer with 2:48 minutes left before Yao was benched seconds later.

"China played well in the second half. But we did great in the first half. Our big guys were excellent on offensive and defensive ends today," Greek coach Panagiotis Giannakis said.

China collected two wins and three losses after the preliminary round.

"We did a good job in the five matches in this round, except the first quarter of this game. We are in the top eight and we're confident to play any top teams in the world," Chinese guard Sun Yue said.


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