China and Qatar will meet in the men's basketball final after they stunned Jordan and Iran respectively in the semifinals of the Doha Asian Games here on Wednesday.

China enjoyed a comfortable win over Jordan on 86-58, while Qatar fought for a 67-64 semifinal victory.

Wang Zhizhi scored team-high 20 points to help China breeze past Jordan against a sluggish start. The former NBA player also dished out two rebounds and three blocks. NBA prospect Yi Jianlian scored 17 points and pulled down 10 rebounds while Mo Ke and Zhu Fangyu contributed 13 and 12 points respectively.

China's man-to-man defence proved a failure as they were trailing 26-21 in the first quarter.

"We are not very well in the start but finished well. I am happy we finally enter the final," said Jonas Kazlauskas, coach of the Chinese team, "because we had some problems on the defence and Jordan had some good three pointers. It's very difficult to cover very well, so we put on zone defence."

After changing to zone defence, China gradually found their rhythm.

Within three minutes left in the third quarter, China made a 12-point run to lead the game 57-38. Mo Ke's three pointers and four points from Zhu Fangyu improved their biggest margin over Jordan even to 29 points.

China attempted 44 three-pointers and converted 22, a 50% percent proved the key to the victory.

"Their three-point shooting is not normal," said Mario Palma, head coach of Jordan, who merely converted five three-pointers out of 21 attempts.

The fourth quarter proved a garbage time.

"But I'm only three months in Jordan and in the last three months, we never lost any game. And it's the first time we lost more than 10 points. However, there are more games coming," added Palma, "China is a very good team. They can play any team in the world."

Captain Al Khas Zaid paced Jordan with a game-high 27 points and five rebounds. Abbas Islam managed 12 points, 10 rebounds and three assists.

In the other semi, Qatar went through a hard-fought game and are assured of their first Asian Games basketball medal after a 67-64 win over Iran.

After both sides missed their combined first seven field goals, Iran opened the score and took an early 16-4 lead. However, Qatar reversed the trend by notching the opening five points in the second quarter, ending the first half at 25-24 favoring Iran.

Thanks to home crowd's cheering, Qatar sank 29 points in the third quarter, taking a 10-point lead into the fourth quarter.

Mahdi Kamrany's layup in the final 10 seconds helped Iran cut the deficit to three points but they couldn't turn over the table as the final score was 67-64 in favor of the hosts.

Qatar won the historic semi as the ninth-place in Busan, South Korea in 2002 was their highest ranking at an Asian Games basketball tournament.

On China's disadvantages, Joseph Stiebing, coach of the Qatari team, said that "I think we are more athletic and we will do more in controlling the defence and rebounding."

"China is a premier team even Yao Ming is not here. I like No. 7 (Wang Shipeng), he is a good shooter. But we still have confidence as to win the gold medal."

Editor: Donald