Five takeaways from the Qualification to the Quarter-Finals

FOSHAN (FIBA U16 Asia Championship) - The Qualification to the Quarter-Finals brought out some great moments, and ended with four worthy teams completing the FIBA U16 Asia Championship Quarter-Finals cast.

Here are five things that stood out today from the four Qualification to the Quarter-Finals contests.

Size still matters sometimes

When the Philippines beat Hong Kong on Day 4, the size difference was really noticeable. On one end was a team that had an average height of 6ft 4in (1.92m) and whose tallest player was 7ft 1in (2.16m), while on the other end was a team with an average height of 6ft 0in (1.82m) and whose tallest guy was 6ft 2in (1.88m). It was really no contest from the get-go, and even on the court, the Filipinos imposed their size advantage to the hilt. The Philippines were +30 in rebounds, +6 in blocks and + 18 in points in the paint. Yes, sometimes, bigger is still better.

Survival of the fittest

Today's second game was a marathon, and the fittest survived. Chinese Taipei put up a whale of a fight in a game they were favored to win, but it just seemed like Lebanon had a bit more gas in the tank left to make the critical plays down the stretch. Andre Tannoury, Eddy Labaki, Mohamed El Khatib, Yousef Khayat and others stepped up big in the clutch for Lebanon. Only two guys didn't play for Lebanon (big man Yorgo Bou Harb was injured), and their minutes were more evenly spread out whereas Taipei played a tighter rotation with four guys playing 28 minutes or more. By game's end, the slightly fresher team were left standing.

Any team is one bad game away from elimination

In the same game, Chinese Taipei learned another bitter lesson - any team, even a very good team favored to win - can lose against a gritty and determined foe. The Taipei quintet pushed Iran to the brink on Day 3 and were the higher-seeded team in their match against Lebanon, but they faltered. Numbers-wise, Taipei shot better on Day 4 compared to Day 3, but their rebounding was awful (-22) and, once again, their big guns - Lin Lin, Mao Chien-Hao and Chen Kuan-Chung - just could not hit the mark. That Big Three combined to shoot 11-of-43 against Lebanon, and that was their ultimate undoing.

Low and slow can still win

It took a really long while for New Zealand to get into an offensive flow, but once they finally did, they ran roughshod all over Malaysia. The Malaysians had the right idea to slow things down and keep the score low to give themselves a better shot at sticking close in the endgame, but the Junior Tall Blacks got hot in the payoff period, outscoring Malaysia, 31-14. New Zealand tallied nearly 40% of their total output in those last ten minutes, and they hope they can ride that momentum into their next game against Iran.

Korea is still a very deep team

Losing to Japan was hard to swallow for Korea, but today in their win against Macau, they reminded everyone just how deep they are as a team. Before the tournament started, Korea head coach Kim HyunSoo said that he thinks this 2018 team is even deeper than the 2015 squad that won the title, and, frankly speaking, it looks like he's right. Everyone scored in today's win over Macau with eight players scoring 8 points or more and only one guy scoring more than 13. How's that for spreading the wealth, eh? Clearly, anybody can have his night on this team, and that may just be their greatest weapon looking ahead into their titanic tussle with Australia.

FIBA