China beats Mali to qualify for FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup

BELGRADE, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- China's women's basketball team secured their participation at the FIBA Women's World Cup in Australia by beating Mali 84-64 on Friday in Belgrade.

China became the first to join Australia and the United States at the flagship event later this year, moving to 2-0 in Group B.

China quickly built a double-digit lead spearheaded both in offense and defense by Li Yueru, and managed to expand it further to 23 points by the final quarter.

Although Mali showed greater resistance in the fourth quarter, they only just managed to reduce the gap to 20 points.

Li Yueru scored 21 points along with 11 rebounds, followed by Li Meng (15 points) and Yang Liwei (13). Adama Coulibaly scored 15 points for Mali and Kamite Elisabeth Dabou added another 12.

China's acting head coach Zheng Wei said after the match that Mali's players showed great strength, and that the Chinese team prepared well for the game to make the victory certain.

"We played very well offensively, but we also made some mistakes and had ups and downs. We need to do better in the next game against France," Zheng said.

Zheng added that the team, which is composed of young players, didn't play international games for a long time due to COVID-19 and still made some "silly mistakes" as they got into the right shape.

Li Yueru said the team had improved the game from yesterday's match against Nigeria and that the players executed some strategies which decided their second victory at the qualification tournament.

Mali coach Joaquin Luis Brizuela Carrion said that the team still hopes to grab the one remaining ticket in their game against Nigeria on Sunday, in the battle for the third place in the group.

"We are a little sad because we lost the game, but I am at the same time happy because every day we improve our games. I want to congratulate China because they have very good players who made a lot of very good shots and we have to respect that," he said.

On Sunday, China will take on France for first place in Group B. Elsewhere on Friday, France was surprised by Nigeria 67-65 but still nailed a World Cup spot.