“All the players played the best they could and did what they had to do differently than yesterday.”
Women’s World Cup 2022, the Japanese basketball team lost to Serbia 64-69 in the second game of the group league. Looking at the power rankings presented on FIBA’s official website In Group B, the host country Australia was 2nd, Japan 4th, Canada 6th, France 8th, Serbia 9th, and Mali 12th. Although this is only a rough observation, Japan is considered to have the highest ability, and for Serbia, it was a great upset achievement.
Serbia lost to Canada 60-67 in the tournament opener the day before. With the loss to Japan here and the start of a losing streak, the yellow light was already on for the top 4 teams to progress to the final tournament, but they kept going by showing the underlying strength that won the Women’s Euro Basket 2021 last year. .
Serbia will be led by Marina Markovich, who has been the head coach of Denso Iris for two seasons until last season and is still an advisor. Naturally, in addition to Maki Takada and Himawari Ako, who belonged to Denso, who are students, the other national team players also knew their opponents well, and were able to stop the shots and transitions 3 -point, which is Japanese weapons.
Japan national team head coach Toru Onzuka ended up missing 5 out of 22 3-point shots, and looked back at the reasons why he couldn’t bring in the development of speed. “I was aiming to create a pick and roll, but I couldn’t clear the opponent’s defense better in the setup than yesterday. I couldn’t connect with the transition offense because I was taken.”
Marina, who took off her hat at what Japan had done, said, “It was very sad to lose to Canada yesterday. All of the players showed a strong desire to play as well as possible and make fewer mistakes. Differently until yesterday, everyone did what they had to do.”
“I don’t like playing against the team I was in, the players I was leading.”
Marina said about Serbia in this tournament, “Since then, five players have left the team, and the team is no longer European champions. The team in this tournament is developing, focusing on the new generation of players. “Representatives continue to have the following problem.
“They are not only young, but they have no experience on the big stage. Unfortunately, the situation in the Serbian league is not good and they are at the level of university students in Japan. The problem for us is that it is not a high quality league. The players are young and they don’t play in a high level league. We have to learn and grow in the face of these two difficulties.”
“I am very happy that we were able to win against a great team like Japan,” he said, emphasizing how important this victory was for the team.
By the way, Marina says that the conflict with familiar Japan “was not particularly stimulating.” However, not because I am not interested, but because I have a special feeling for Japan.
“First of all, I have a lot of respect for the Japanese national team. I don’t like it. Denso members were with me every day, so they are like family in Japan. It’s always a sentimental feeling to play against someone like that. Today, Takada and Ako played great, but there’s no surprise in
Marina, who knows Japan well, challenged Japan and lost. However, given that tomorrow is a rest day and there is plenty of time left to rebuild, the fact that we were able to feel the flaws in the second game of the group league and the start of the tournament can be seen as a factor positive for further progress. In order to respond to Marina’s feelings of great respect for Japan, we would like to use this loss as motivation to step up in the match against Canada two days later.
