Bangkok, Nov 15 (IANS) The Indian U-18 women's basketball team have suffered their third successive loss with a 80-46 defeat to Chinese Taipei at the 23rd FIBA Asia U-18 championship here on Tuesday.
Meng-Hsin Chen (17 points), Yu-Lin Kao (14 points) and J. Wang (14 points) were the outstanding performers for Chinese Taipei while Bhandavya Gowda (10 points), Priyanka Prabhakara (8 points) and Nishanti Masilamani (9 points) did well for India.
Unlike Monday's match when India were up against the much taller China, this time around, the two teams were evenly matched in terms of size.
India opened up a 7-6 lead early on before Taipei's defence clamped down allowing them to go on a 18-2 run to close the first quarter with a 24-9 lead.
In the second quarter, Taipei continued to force India into sideline and baseline traps resulting in multiple turnovers.
At halftime the score read 41-13 in favour of Taipei.
Led by the small forward-shooting guard duo of Anusha Parapalli and Priyanka Prabhakara, who between them had 11 offensive rebounds, India finally showed some much needed scoring touch in the third quarter, winning the period 22-12.
In the final 10 minutes, Taipei regrouped and snuffed out any hopes India may have harboured of continuing their comeback, to seal the win.
