Taipei, June 28 (CNA) Taiwan's under-18 women's national basketball team finished third in the preliminary round of the 2010 International Basketball Federation (FIBA) Asia U-18 Championship for Women in Thailand and is scheduled to meet China later Monday in the semifinals.
Opening the tournament with a three-game winning streak, Taiwan lost to China, 55-106, and to Japan, 62-67, in the last two games. The Taiwan team finished with three wins and two losses in the six-team single round-robin preliminary round, behind defending champions Japan (5-0) and China (4-1) . South Korea squeezed into the final four with two wins and three losses.
Taiwan is scheduled to meet China 8 p.m. Monday, Taiwan time, while Japan will take on South Korea in the other semifinal game.
The biennial tournament, which is being held in Surat Thani, Thailand, from June 23-30, serves as a qualifying event for the FIBA World U19 Championship for Women to be held in Chile next year. The top three teams in the tournament will represent Asia in Chile.
The tourney is divided into two six-team levels -- the elite Level I and the qualifying Level II. The teams will play all the other teams in their group, with the top four in Level I qualifying for the semifinals, while winners in Level II will play the bottom two in Level I for a chance to enter the Level I competition in the future.
Malaysia (1-4) and Kazakhstan (0-5) failed to advance to the semifinal round in the Level I. Host Thailand (5-0) and India (4-1) emerged as the top two teams in the Level II.
The competition had been dominated by China and South Korea before Japan upset China to capture the gold medal for the first time in 2008. Taiwan has won silver and bronze in the competition, but never gold. China has won 11 U18 Asian titles, while South Korea has won seven. (By Chris Wang) enditem /pc