Japan U16 group hoping to follow in elders' footsteps

TOKYO (FIBA U16 Asian Women's Championship 2017) - Japan have won the last three FIBA Women's Asia Cup titles and reached the Semi-Finals of the FIBA U19 Women's Basketball World Cup for the first time this summer. That gives plenty of incentive to the Japanese at the FIBA U16 Women's Asian Championship 2017.

Japan in fact have good history with the location of the U16 tournament as they captured the FIBA Women’s Asia Cup 2017 in Bengaluru back in July.

"Yes, it surely is a big motivation for our players," Japan's U16 head coach Mikiko Hagiwara said. "We all respect their strong will to fight and guts to face difficulties. We truly hope our team will be like our senior team."

Japan collect their medals from winning the FIBA U16 Women's Asian Championship 2011.

Japan have had good success at the FIBA U16 Women's Asian Championship as well, winning the 2011 title and grabbing the second spot on the podium in the three other biennial tournaments in 2009, 2013 and 2015. But Hagiwara knows it will not be easy in India.

"I think it will be tough because we don't have many tall players in our team. However, we will surely do our best," the coach said.

This will be the first FIBA U16 Women's Asian Championship with two participants from Oceania - those being Australia and New Zealand. But the older Japanese teams have shown that they can handle the world powers Australia - beating them in the FIBA Women's Asia Cup 2017 final and in the Group Phase at the FIBA U19 Women's Basketball World Cup 2017.

Hagiwara, however, did not want to immediately raise the Japanese faithful's hopes that the U16 team will have the next Japanese stars such as Asami Yoshida, Ramu Tokashiki and Manami Fujioka.

Ramu Tokashiki has been a major reason why Japan have dominated the FIBA Women's Asia Cup - and been an inspiration to later generations of Japanese players.

"We don't have players like Tokashiki who is tall with athletic talent," the coach said. "However, we as a coaching staff would like to do our best to bring our players up to be like them who were ex-U16 and U18 national players."

One of the players who will give this Japanese team a bit of size - as well as a bit of uncommon experience for the Asian side - is US-born Maya McArthur. The 5ft 11in (1.81m) center's father Eric McArthur is an American who played professionally in Japan for nearly two decades and was naturalized in 2000 and wore the Japan jersey at the 2006 Asian Games in Doha. 

Maya McArthur, whose mother is Japanese, took part in the trials for the United States team for the FIBA U16 Americas Championship 2017. She made it to the final 37 players in the USA trials in May, failing to make the cut for the final 18.

Japan have been drawn into Group B with two-time reigning champions China, Thailand and Hong Kong.

FIBA