FIBA ASIA WOMEN'S CHAMPIONSHIP-INDIAN WOMEN RELEGATED TO LEVEL 2
28/10/2015
Jeena’s 28 points could not help India to keep in Level 1 and has ended its campaign Losing to Philippines 76-82 which made them relegated to Level 2 campaign for the Next edition here at the 26th FIBA Asia Women’s Championship 2015 at Wuhan, China.
India led the first quarter with 22-16 lead but Philippines came back and led only by two (39-37) at the end of the half-time, and increased the lead 65-53 which virtually sealed fate of the game.but India came back in the last quarter and reduced the score but could not able to defeat them
Kerala forward Jeena Skaria was India’s top scorer for the fourth straight game as she scored 28 points and 6 rebounds 2 steals and one block performance showed her elite class and underlined arguments that she can be counted among Asia’s finest. Jeena could do little to alter the result though captain and experienced Anitha Scored 19 points followed by Poojamol with 11 and Smruthy Radhakrishnan making 9 for Philippines Afril Bernardino returned a tournament-high 32 points
We cannot blame India for this Poor performance India Came to Wuhan with 4 weeks of Practise that too in different stadium because of the infighting in the associations’ and to make the thing worse India came to Wuhan with only 11 players as guard [Kavita Akula who had to skip the event in the last minute due to college commitments in the US] was too bad because most of our game strategy revolved around her, and the coach cannot be blamed as have no time to make adjustments
Coach Francisco Garcia again praised the performance of Jeena who scored 86 points and 35 rebounds for India from the six matches she played followed by Smruthy Radhakrishnan who was second in efficiency per game for India with 6.8 average while Jeenas average efficiency was 15.