Original title: Chinese men’s basketball team went to Iran to participate in the World Preliminaries
Beijing Daily News (Reporter Chen Jiakun) The Chinese men’s basketball team set off for Iran on the evening of the 7th to participate in the fifth window of the 2023 Men’s Basketball World Cup Asian qualifiers. At the same time, the Chinese team announced the list of 14 players, and Zhou Qi, who has attracted much attention due to a calf injury, is still on the list.
The Chinese team recruited 17 players for this training session, but in the end Sun Minghui, Abdusalamu and Lu Wenbo missed the final list. Among them, Sun Minghui suffered a shoulder injury in the previous CBA regular season. After reporting to the national team, the injury did not improve, and he was unable to participate in normal training. After obtaining the consent of the coaching staff, he returned to the club for treatment.
The Chinese team will play against Iran and Bahrain in this window. The Chinese team’s 14-man roster includes 3 centers, 5 forwards and 6 defenders. The center is Zhou Qi, Shen Zijie, and Wang Zhelin; the forwards are Zhu Junlong, Gu Quan, Zhou Peng, Zhu Mingzhen, and Ren Junfei; the defenders are Jiang Weize, Zhao Rui, Wu Qian, Wang Yibo, Xu Jie, and Hu Mingxuan.
As the best player in the fourth window of the World Preliminaries, Zhou Qi’s importance to the Chinese men’s basketball team is self-evident. However, a few days ago, Zhou Qi’s Southeastern Melbourne Phoenix team in Australia issued an official announcement saying that Zhou Qi injured his calf in training, and the team hoped that he could return in three weeks. This news also cast a shadow over Zhou Qi’s trip to the World Preliminaries.
Zhou Qi will fly directly from Australia to Iran, where he will join the Chinese team. But whether he can play in the end depends on his leg injury and the assessment of the coaching staff. Even if they can play, I am afraid that the performance will be discounted. In addition, Guo Ailun, the main defender of the Chinese team and a famous player of the Liaoning team, was not selected for this training camp of the national team. This time, the Chinese team will face its strongest opponent in Asia, the Iran team.
After the end of the fourth window period, the Chinese team temporarily ranked second in Group F with a total score of 6 wins and 2 losses, and the Australian team with eight consecutive victories ranked first. The three to six teams in this group are Kazakhstan, Iran, Japan and Bahrain. Because the Japanese team as the host has already qualified for the World Cup, the Australian team’s first position in the group is difficult to shake, and the Bahrain team has basically been eliminated. Therefore, the competition for the World Cup places in Group F is mainly between China, Iran and Kazakhstan. expand between.
Talking about the goal of this window period, the head coach of the Chinese team, Du Feng, said: “Actually, for us, if we can win one of these two games, we will basically qualify, but we still hope to win both games and do our best to win. Let’s go and beat our spirits.”
The Iranian team is the old opponent of the Chinese team in the Asian basketball arena, and this game was played at the home court of the Iranian team, and the opponent also made adequate preparations. Du Feng said: “The Iranian league stopped at the beginning of October. The team concentrated in mid-October. Now it has been training for two or three weeks. It can be said that preparations have been made, so we must be prepared to deal with difficulties and play our the level it should be.”