Resilient Australia remains unbeaten in the Asia Cup as they thrashed Jordan with a 78-60 victory in Jakarta.
Thon Maker displayed a surprising performance in his Asia Cup Debut. He averaged 23 points, 8 rebounds, and 3 three-pointers.
Jordan didn’t stop here and made a quick turnaround with a 10-0 run in the third quarter. Jordan took over Australia and made them scoreless for 5 minutes. Ahmad Al Dwairi outplayed in his first Asia Cup after 2013, delivering an all-around effort of 10 points, 16 rebounds, 6 assists, and 2 blocks.
He wowed the audience with several thundering dunks and put on an all-around outstanding display. Samson Froling, a young big guy, added to the force with 16 points and 8 rebounds of his own.
Australia managed to secure only two points for a span of eight minutes between the third and fourth quarters. It gave Jordan hope for a comeback and kept their victory hopes alive.
Turning point
With a few three-pointers and free throws for an 8-0 run over the course of one minute, Clinton Steindl and Thon Maker ensured to put an end to it.
Australia wasn’t exactly in a situation where they needed a hero to save them, but Maker’s outstanding performance undoubtedly provided them a major boost. Along with scoring the most points for the team and grabbing the same number of rebounds, Maker also had one block, which only partially reflects how important he was on defense.
Jordan is a fairly proficient shooting squad overall. They now rank fourth in the World Cup Qualifiers for three-point shooting at 32.4 percent. They were only able to shoot 17.9 percent in this game. While Jordan was undoubtedly experiencing a shooting slump, the Australian defense deserves a lot of the credit.
Jordan played vigorously in the second half and won the game early on. They were enough confident in front of a challenging side.
Jordan head coach Wesam Al-Sous said: “I’m leaving with a better feeling in the second half, we fought hard, we did better defensively and we closed the gap.”
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