{"id":544159,"date":"2026-03-16T14:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544159\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T14:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:02:09","slug":"womens-basketball-world-cup-china-get-through-qualifiers-but-want-to-be-a-better-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544159\/","title":{"rendered":"Women\u2019s Basketball World Cup: China get through qualifiers, but \u2018want to be a better team\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">China\u2019s women had already reached this year\u2019s Fiba Basketball World Cup by the time they came up against the Czech Republic on Sunday, but there was no chance of their going easy.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Gong Luming\u2019s side powered to an 84-74 victory, sealing their third win of the play-in tournament in some style, and putting the finishing touches to a qualification secured by Brazil\u2019s 76-73 win over Mali hours earlier at Wuhan Sports Centre Gymnasium.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The win took China to second in the standings before they face the Brazilians in their final qualifying match on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">With China guaranteed before the match against the Czechs of one of the 11 available places across four global qualifying tournaments, Gong said his side were not satisfied with just reaching the World Cup.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cWe want to go further, we want to be a better team, so this game is also a good test for us,\u201d the China coach said. \u201cThey played hard and challenged us, and things went well, things went wrong, and we tried to stay together and play together. In the future, we want to play better basketball together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"China\u2019s win over the Czechs was their third of the Fiba World Cup qualifying tournament. Photo: AFP\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/62068746-0743-45cd-ac89-2d89e4f5541f_3b0d8e3d.jpg\" title=\"China\u2019s win over the Czechs was their third of the Fiba World Cup qualifying tournament. Photo: AFP\"\/>China\u2019s win over the Czechs was their third of the Fiba World Cup qualifying tournament. Photo: AFP<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The 68-year-old knows tougher tests lie ahead and hopes to pit his side against stronger opposition so they can work on building team chemistry and tactics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China\u2019s women had already reached this year\u2019s Fiba Basketball World Cup by the time they came up against&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,79354,11308,512,586,269632,269629,244832,149120,4117,85,269631,269633,269630],"class_list":["post-544159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-berlin","tag-brazil","tag-china","tag-czech-republic","tag-fiba-basketball-world-cup","tag-gong-luming","tag-han-xu","tag-li-yueru","tag-mali","tag-sports","tag-wang-siyu","tag-wuhan-sports-centre-gymnasium","tag-yang-shuyu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}