JOR - Problems grow for Jordan at Stankovic Cup

BEIRUT (FIBA Asia Stankovic Cup/FIBA World Championship) - Jordan's miserable start to the FIBA Asia Stankovic Cup continued on Monday as they went down 75-71 to the Philippines.

Jordan, who are using this tournament as a warm-up for the FIBA World Championship, arrived in Beirut as the defending champions but have looked anything but in losing their first two games.

They could find no answer to Asi Taulava, who scored 13 points and and grabbed 12 rebounds for the victors, while Marnel Baracel had 16 points.

As he did following the opening loss to Qatar, Jordan coach Mario Palma sought to downplay the importance of the result.

“Such defeats don’t really matter. What we have to introspect is, if we did what we expected to do right,” he said, while also diagnosing what went wrong.

“I think our outside shooting has been very bad so far,” Palma said.

Jordan made just five of 28 from long-range.

However, there was good news as Rasheim Wright suggested his return from injury was going well with a game-high haul of 17 points.

Fellow Turkey-bound side Lebanon picked up their second win in strange circumstances as Syria refused to take the court, forfeiting the game, much to the disappointment of the Beirut crowd who wanted to see the home team play.

“We have followed the terms set under the FIBA Internal Regulations and have imposed the penalties on Syria who refused to play,” said Hagop Khajirian, a member of the Technical Committee of the competition.

“A win by 20-0 score will be awarded to Lebanon and they will keep their two points. Syria will lose the game but also the one point they would have got if it was a normal defeat."

Those results mean the Philippines top Group B from Lebanon, while Qatar are third ahead of Jordan and Syria.

Chinese Taipei have gone top of Group A after coming from behind to beat Iraq 86-77.

Iraq, who are playing in their first FIBA Asia competition in 23 years, had led 64-52 with 10 minutes left in the game thanks to a stunning 23-0 run, but seemed to run out of energy down the stretch as Chinese Taipei came back at them.

“They caught us completely unguarded,” said Taipei coach Xue Lei Zhang.

“We were glad to return the favor in kind in the fourth. I must say we were lucky to get away,” he added.

Chen Shih-nien led Taipei’s scoring with 16 points – seven of them in the fourth quarter.

Level on points with Taipei are Kazakhtan, who eased past Iran 80-67.

Dmitriy Gavrilov led the way with 22 points as Kazakhstan proved too much for this Iran team, which is a reserve side as the seniors are preparing for the FIBA World Championship elsewhere.

FIBA

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