Asian Games: India women cagers lose in basketball quarterfinal

Incheon: Indian women cagers failed to put up a fight against a formidable Japan and suffered a crushing 37-70 loss in the basketball quarterfinal match of the 17th Asian Games here yesterday.

Raspreet Sidhu and Kavita Akula contributed nine points each from the field, while skipper Smruthi Radhakrishnan managed eight points in a match that was completely dominated by the Japanese right from the start.

Sidhu could only hit twice from seven two-point attempts and once from three three-point attempts but she managed two out of two from the free-throw line at the Hwaseong Sports Complex Gymnasium.

Kavita, however, wasted chances galore as she could convert merely three out of 12 field goal chances and hit thrice out of 10 three-point attempts. Radhakrishnan managed six out of six from the free-throw line.

For Japan, who had shocked China yesterday, Maya Kawahara was the top scorer with nine points but all her teammates also managed to register points in the scoresheet.

Japan dished out a dominating performance as they led in all the four quarters by a huge margin and didn't give any chance to India to make any comeback.

After the first quarter itself, Japanese eves were leading and they kept increasing the margin from there on. They finished the second and third quarter with a 36-18 and 58-27 lead before shutting the door on the Indians.

The Indian men's team had crashed out of the Asian Games after losing to Iran in a preliminary round match on Wednesday.