The ‘young’ Korean national men’s basketball team lost to Japan by 8 points in their second friendly match after struggling under the goal.
Korea, led by coach Ahn Jun-ho, lost 80-88 to Japan in the second match of the SoftBank Cup held at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan on the 7th.
For this competition, our country has formed a national team comprised mainly of young players with an average age of 24.
Japan also gave rest to star players Rui Hachimura and Yuta Watanabe, but all of its national league representative players participated, leading to the evaluation that it had an advantage over Korea in terms of strength.
While Japan has maintained ‘real-game mode’ in preparation for the Paris Olympics, including two evaluation matches against world No. 5 Australia last month, our country, which will not be participating in the Olympics, took a break after the end of the 2023-2024 professional basketball season and only began training at the end of last month.
Japan, which lost by one point to Korea, which showed an active performance in the first game despite expectations of an advantage, persistently 스포츠 attacked the opponent’s height weakness by sending out 207cm tall Watanabe Hugh and naturalized Japanese center Josh Hawkinson at the same time in the second game.
Our country, which had given up the right to serve to Japan from the beginning, took the lead in the first quarter with an explosion of outside fire.
Korea, which led 22-19 in the first quarter with two 3-pointers from Yoo Ki-sang, struggled with Japan’s rough defense and the referee’s decisions that were much stricter than in the first game, and allowed Japan to take the lead 36-37 with about 2 minutes left in the second quarter.
Korea, which was down 7-19 in rebounds in the first half, allowed three consecutive points to Japanese guard Yuki Kawamura, and fell behind by double digits just two minutes into the second half.
With Lee Jung-hyun, who scored 27 points in the first game, tied up by Japan’s blocking defense, Korea lost its attack route and entered the fourth quarter without being able to narrow the gap to single digits.
