BANGKOK, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- China bounced back from Sunday's buzzer-beater defeat to South Korea and thrashed Kazakhstan with 103-62 to take their first victory at the 25th FIBA Asia Women's Basketball Championship here on Monday.
Young players shone in the defending champion's preliminary round win. Cheng Feng and Gao Song scored a team-high 16 points apiece to lead six Chinese players who reach double digits.
China only let their opponents score nine points in the first quarter and established a 28-point lead by halftime, which left no chance for Kazakhstan.
"When you play a game like that, the main thing is that you need to treat the other team with respect. You have to play hard. Otherwise you disrespect them." said Thomas Maher, head coach of the Chinese team. "I thought we did a pretty good job. It's very difficult to play as hard as you can when you are leading by 40 points."
"I think the young players were pretty good. Chen Xiaojia played a good game. Sun Mengran played much better. Huang Hongpin played pretty well. Nobody was terrible. A few of players are injured so we didn't play them much. Zhao Shuang made some mistakes but she played OK." added Maher.
Kazakhstan team captain Anastassiya Alishauskaite was four-of-five at then three-pointer lane and scored a match-high 18 points but still couldn't save her team.
"We gave too much chances to their shooters. Not like the job we did against South Korea yesterday," said Ji Yanyan, who scored 14 points for China. "We have to improve that in upcoming matches."
On Tuesday China will play against India who lost to South Korea 62-109 earlier today.