[3] Shanxi 121, [6] Shanghai 114: The Shanxi Brave Dragons rallied behind 29 points and 22 rebounds from Charles Gaines to come back from a double-digit second-half deficit and eliminate Yao Ming’s Shanghai Sharks. The series wrapped up in four games with Shanxi taking their third and final victory on the road. This from Sharkfinhoops.com…
Things reversed themselves quite quickly when the sides returned as Shanghai opened up a double-digit lead. Liu continued to keep the home crowd on their feet with his shooting and tidy passing and for while, it looked as if the Sharks were going to push on and open up their guests for further punishment. However, almost as soon as the Sharks had themselves a decent lead, Shanxi came back strongly with Gaines and Duan putting up enough points to level the scores at a time whilst Shanghai suddenly went through a dry patch in front of the basket.
The final quarter, that started with the scoreboard sitting at 85-85, quickly turned bad for Shanghai, who fell behind after Pan Jiang dropped a tidy trey and then Gaines punched in a lay-up in heavy traffic.
The Sharks were now frantically chasing the game and the growing number of missed free-throws were becoming an increasing problem for Shanghai, who badly needed to convert all the chances that came their way now that Shanxi were growing in confidence.
When a huge three from Williams made it 100-89 to the visitors with a little over five minutes left on the clock, things looked grim for the Sharks, whose season looked to be fading away rapidly although Liu wasn’t going to led the game slip away without a fight and his crisp bank shot gave him 30 points with four minutes left and the score at 105-98.
Sensing the playoffs were within touching distance, the visitors then began running down the clock. Defiant cries of ‘lets go Shanghai’ rang out from out the Yuanshen but it was too late for the Sharks, who had to repeatedly send Shanxi to the line to try to get the ball back.
I normally like to author these recaps myself, but ^that gives a better description of the second half than anything I could’ve come up with. I was trying to watch two games at once, and that gets especially confusing when you can’t understand the commentators. Anyway, Marcus Williams led Shanxi with a game-high 35 points. They’ll move on to play second-place Beijing in the second round, and I think they’ve got an excellent chance to upset. No team came into the postseason hotter, and I have no doubt that Charles Gaines can handle Randolph Morris. After all, he just got the better of Mike Harris, who I consider to be better than Morris.
[5] Dongguan 111, [4] Xinjiang 103: The Dongguan Leopards fell back by more than 20 in the first quarter, but scored an incredible 40 points in the fourth as they completed a comeback that essentially lasted all game long. Xinjiang built their early lead by pounding the ball into the paint. Their starting frontcourt of Ike Diogu, Mengke Bateer, and Mulati (I guess he only has one name) combined for 28 points in the first quarter alone. Although Mulati finished with just 8, Diogu and Bateer went on to score 29 and 19 points respectively. The two of them were pretty good, but it was Dongguan’s point guard, Josh Akognon, who was completely unstoppable. Akognon got hot at the end of the first, pretty much single-handedly making it a 10-point game. He then dropped the first five points of the second quarter and went on to score a game-high of 39. Xinjiang was playing without their best guard, Tim Pickett, and that definitely hurt them down the stretch. They did get a surprising 29 from one of their Chinese guards, Shirelijan (I guess he only has one name too). Dongguan’s Zhang Kai scored one of the game’s most important buckets when he drove to the rack for a big dunk that put the Leopards up by 5 with just over a minute and a half to go.
A series-deciding game five will be played on March 2nd. The last time a first round CBA series went five games was in 2008.
