Boxscore

INCHEON (FIBA Asia Championship for Women) - Japan weaved a web of almost impregnable defense to take Chinese Taipei by surprise and win the needle Level I encounter on Tuesday.

Their defeat to Taipei at the 2006 Doha Asian Games on his mind, coach Tomohide Utsumi said "we had done our homework well. I'm happy it worked to perfection."

Leading the campaign was their reliable Noriko Sakakibara-Yuko Oga duo. The former, the skipper, managed the scoring in the paint rather adeptly, but more importantly presented a tall wall in stopping Taipei from their second-attempt shots. Oga, was her usual exuberant self, leaving the rival defense behind time and again combining her blistering drive-ins with some incredible perimeter shooting.

"The two were at their best today," Utsumi said. "Of course we have as a big match tomorrow (against Korea). I think they way the two have struck form, and the manner in which the rest are rallying around, you can look forward to a humdinger."

Chinese Taipei coach Lin Hung Ling-Yao was rather dismissive about talks of a "revenge match."

"The two happened in entirely different circumstances," said the coach. "Our players were not at their best today."

She defended her decision to take the court with all bench players in the fourth quarter. "I wanted the key players to preserve themselves for the next game." Taipei play China on Wednesday.

"They were brilliant in their rebound. We could hardly do anything," was her assessment of the team's performance on Tuesday.

Scores
Japan 67 (Yuko Oga 20, Noriko Sakakibara 15) bt Chinese Taipei 58 (Wen Chi 14, Liu Chun Yi 10). (Quarterwise: 22-11, 32-27, 51-36).

S Mageshwaran
FIBA Asia