A day after the country won the hosting rights for next year’s FIBA Asia Championship, Lebanon’s national squad suffered a major upset, falling 79-72 to Qatar in the quarterfinals of the FIBA Asia Cup Thursday in Tokyo, Japan.
Lebanon won the top seed in Group A of the tournament by virtue of a better quotient over the SMART-Gilas Pilipinas national team and China after the preliminary round, while Qatar lone win came against lowly India.
But it hardly mattered in the knockout round, as naturalized former NBA player Trey Johnson caught fire with 28 points on 13-of-21 shooting from the field for Qatar. Lebanese star Fadi El-Khatib was also held to just 12 points on 4-of-12 shooting.
The loss means that the highest that Lebanon, the tournament’s defending champion, could finish is fifth.
Lebanon’s loss brings with it some schadenfreude for Filipino basketball officials and fans, who were incredulous over FIBA Asia’s choice of Lebanon over the Philippines as the venue for next year’s championship. Officials of Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas said that the country had a much better presentation for hosting.
“For one, SBP sent a full delegation and made a comprehensive presentation; from what we saw, Lebanon had only four of its national players as advocates,” said SBP president Manuel V. Pangilinan, who led the presentation. (InterAKTV is part of InterAksyon.com, the news website of TV5, which is chaired by Pangilinan.)
FIBA Asia secretary-general Hagop Khajirian is Lebanese.
Source : interaksyon.com
Photos : FIBA Asia photo
