China beat Croatia 92-55 in an exciting high-scoring and quality match to win the four-nation men's basketball tournament in Beijing on July 11.

China raced to a 6-1 lead in the first five minutes. Li Nan and Yao Ming combined to scored all of China's next six field goals to extend the lead to 19-8.

"This is the best game we played in these three days,"said Del Harris, head coach of China. "It is good for us to compete with a good physical basketball team like Croatia and Brazil. The matches against them gave us good experiences like boxing matches."

Jurica Zura kept Croatia in the game with 19 points including three 3-points, but he is the only player in Croatia team to score more than ten. Damir Rancic added eight points, while Hrvoje Orsulic made six and seven rebounds.

"I am sorry we didn't play good today," said head coach of Croatia Neven Spahija. "But we didn't have chance to play better.It is only practice for us, this is not our first team. I am alsosorry that we couldn't help China to prepare better for Olympic Games."

Yao, the Houston Rocket's center, was on the court with his second straight game with an injury that put him on the bench in China's last four warm-up games. His status is listed as day-to-day and he will accompany the team move to Urumchi on Monday as the second stage of the tournament.

Yao led the game with 22 points in 20 minutes 25 seconds, including 12-15 from the line. Menk Batter and Du Feng were the two other Chinese players to make double figures with 10 points.

China got improved production with Chen Ke, who finished with eight points and three rebounds.

China led for all and extended the lead to 37 in the last quarter. Croatia was held to only eight points in the third quarter.

But both teams could not find basket behind 3-point line, China shot 33.3 percent compared to 17 for Croatia.

"Our zone defense today is outstanding," said Harris. "I didn't think our zone defense could be as active as it in this game. But you have to do your house on your defense, that's man-to-man defense."

In the other game on Sunday, Brazil defeated Canada 90-85.

Source: Xinhua