a demoralising 94-61 opening defeat by the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI feel so proud of my teammates and coach,\u201d said Han, after her team recovered from a five-point deficit with less than 30 seconds left on the clock to force the overtime. \u201cEven the last quarter we lost six points but we never gave up.\u201d<\/p>\n
China\u2019s considerable height has astonished teams in Berlin and fans around the world, with the 19-year-old 2.2-metre centre Zhang Ziyu providing one of the tournament\u2019s early viral moments in her first call-up to the senior national team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like if me and her both go to the court together, I always want to give her good energy,\u201d Han told reporters. \u201cShe\u2019s the best post player, she can finish to the rim and she can protect the paint.\u201d<\/p>\n
Han will find herself across the court from her former Liberty teammate and close friend Lorela Cubaj when China play Italy in their final group-stage encounter on Sept 7.<\/p>\n
Italy will play favourites the United States later on Sept 6 in a highly competitive Group D.<\/p>\n
The tournament has provided plenty of thrills so far, with talent surging around the world, as Mali recorded their first win over a European team with an 82-73 Group A defeat of Spain, who had been widely expected to enjoy a deep run. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China used their considerable height to battle past the Czech Republic 74-70 in an overtime thriller at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":882269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-882268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882268","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=882268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}