SAN CRISTOBAL DE LA LAGUNA, Spain — China rallied from a 14-point halftime deficit to beat Canada 76-71 in the consolation bracket at the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup on Saturday.
China will face France in the fifth-place game while Canada, ranked No. 5 in the world, will take on Nigeria for seventh place on Sunday.
Li Meng scored 18 points and Han Xu had 12 to lead the Chinese squad.
Kia Nurse scored 18 points to lead Canada while Natalie Achonwa added 13 points and seven rebounds. Jamie Scott had 10 points and five rebounds off the bench.
"This is a very young team and these are really, really tough lessons to learn but the world is very good at basketball and we're learning that right now," said captain Kim Gaucher.
Canada, which was coming off a disappointing quarterfinal loss to Spain, had another rough fourth quarter. The Canadians gave up the first 19 points to Spain in the quarterfinals after leading by three heading into that final period. Against China, Canada led 62-58 going into the final period.
Nigeria lost to France 84-62 in the first game of the day.
"We're going to regroup and put forth our best effort tomorrow to finish as high as we possibly can in this tournament," said Canada's head coach Lisa Thomaidis. "Every team here is really good and unfortunately we didn't' have the consistency of effort to sustain the lead we built in the first half."
The Canadian Press
