South Africa’s wheelchair basketball team allowed Japan to snatch victory after a three-minute lapse which let their opponents win 60-58 in their final Group A match at the Beijing Paralympics.
“We just lost concentration for a while,” lamented captain Marius Papenfus, “and although we came back well, when they got that final shot in off a rebound, we didn’t have enough time to get back.”
South Africa dominated for the first three quarters, leading 43-40 going into the final period, but then Japan had a run of nine unanswered points to take them into a 51-45 lead, and that meant South Africa was always playing catch-up.
Richard Nortje, who is the second-highest scorer of the tournament with 87, was upset at the way the match turned.
“We had the game under control for most of the game. There was one point when our coach put a bad combination of players onto the court and they couldn’t keep the pressure on Japan,” he said.
With Hiroaki Kozai’s last-ditch score, South Africa had just more than a second left to try and pull the game from the fire. “The coach tried to set Nicholas Taylor up for a three-pointer,” said forward Marcus Retief.
“We took the shot but the ball didn’t get in.” It wasn’t for lack of trying. Taylor had sunk a vital three-pointer with just 27 seconds left on the clock to give South Africa a 58-57 lead, but three agonising free throws to Japan saw the lead wither away and Japan won.
This was one of two matches South Africa targeted to win at the games -the other was against Sweden on Wednesday, which South Africa won 64-56.
Victory would have had the team playing off for seventh. Instead, South Africa will be in playoffs for positions nine to 12. As they was ranked 12th at the start of the games, that’s a good performance, but not one that makes Papenfus entirely happy.
“We wanted to get into the top eight, so we’re disappointed, but we need to remember that 11th or higher is better than any team from Africa has ever done,” he said.
