FIBA Asia Challenge 2016: Thailand vs Qatar Preview

The worst part of the journey has passed by. Now it’s time to get a little more serious.

[อ่านภาษาไทย คลิกที่นี่เลยครับ]

Let’s face it. Beating Korea and Iran was never a part of the plan. I don’t think people were disappointed that Thailand couldn’t beat these two teams. The Japan loss was a bit sad, but that was mostly because Thailand held the lead for a little over an entire quarter.

After 3 straight losses, Thailand gets a shot at a team that might be within striking distance once again.

Qatar holds the FIBA World’s 50th ranking and Asia’s 9th place. While Qatar doesn’t fill up a trophy room (with only two FIBA Asia Championship bronzes in the early 2000s and an Asian Games silver in 2006), they have been in the range of above average for most of the time. In the past 10 years, Qatar has finished under 7th place in the FIBA Asia Championships only once in 2011.

Here’s all that I know about this team: According to FIBA, this team is returning 7 players from the FIBA Asia Championship 2015 squad. And it’s been that core that’s been fueling Qatar so far in this tournament. Let’s start with the older guys:

Big men Mohd Mohamed (6’9″) and Ali Saeed Erfan (6’7″) are edging towards their mid-30s and have provided a solid performances so far. Mohamed is averaging 10.7 points and 4.7 rebounds while Erfan is putting in 8.0 points and 4.7 rebounds. These two will be anchoring the paint.

Perimeter play will be led by 25-year-old Mohamed Hassan A Mohamed. A solid scorer on the FIBA Asia Championship 2015 team, Mohamed brings his experience to the FIBA Asia Challenge and is scoring 9.7 points for Qatar this time around.

His partner in crime in the back court is naturalized player Boney Watson, who has played for Qatar in 3×3 tournaments and in the 2014 Asian Games. 38-year-old Watson leads the team in assists (3.3 per game) in addition to scoring 9.0 points and grabbing 2.3 rebounds.

The most intriguing part of this Qatar team might be their two youngsters, Abdelrahman Yehia Abdelhaleem and Abdulrahman Mohamed Saad. The two 20-year-olds were the main men of the 2014 FIBA Asia U18 Championship team and are now making a presence in the senior squad. Abdelhaleem has been averaging a solid 7.7 points and 4.3 rebounds and Saad has 4.7 points and 5.3 rebounds.

Qatar has a 0-3 record so far losing to Iran (81-49), Iraq (71-54), and Korea (86-60).

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Game Breakdown

You can only have so many moral victories and the truth is that Thailand hasn’t really had many aside from the Japan game. Up to some point, you have to actually be able to grab a W.

Qatar is not going to be an easy win. There are no easy wins in this tournament for Thailand but compared to the games Thailand has played so far, this one seems relatively “winnable”.

The first thing Thailand needs to do it to come out of the gates aggressively and control the flow of the game. Qatar are a big team with two 6’9″ key players, so Thailand can’t afford to slow down in a halfcourt set in every possession. The moment Thailand slows down, they will lose the slight advantage they have in speed and will probably resort to shooting ill-advised long threes.

I’d like to see if Coach Tim Lewis is going to pack it up more tighter in the zone in this game considering Qatar’s size and their lack of long range shooting accuracy (28.9% from three-point land). It’s still going to be hard to defend the bigs of Qatar, but at least it will be easier than if Thailand also had to chase around shooters like in the past games.

Finally, this Qatar team isn’t deep. Their main rotation lies in the 6 players mentioned above and that’s pretty much it. Thailand might be lacking in superior talent, but I feel that they have 9-10 guys who are interchangable in the line up. It would be interesting to see if Coach Tim changes it up consistently to exhaust the Qatar players.

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Key player (Qatar) : Abdelrahman Yehia Abdelhaleem

Thailand needs to lookout for the young big man. Stopping Mohamed and Erfan will be a lot on their hands already, and it’ll be up to how that keep Abdulhaleem from getting into his groove.

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Key player (Thailand) : Patipan Klahan

Klahan has been impressive so far, despite his questionable decision making from time to time. He’s slowly figuring out how to mesh his combination of length and perimeter skills to be more of a full-time wing than a stretch 4.

Thailand still needs someone to be initiative on offense and it might as well be the guy that’s been getting things done. Klahan is averaging a team leading 10.0 points on 46.4% shooting.

PS. Make sure to read his interview with FIBA here.

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Summary

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[For English, Read here]

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