Zhang Bin, director of youth development of the Chinese Basketball Association, commented on the performances of the country's Under-18 (U18) national teams in the FIBA U18 Asian Championships in an interview with Xinhua News Agency on Friday.

The men's team finished the tournament in Iran in August ranking third. The women's team was runner-up in the competitions in India in September. Zhang said both franchises completed their missions but with regrets.

"The U18 men's team made the semifinals as their mission required. But when we set that target, we though both Australia and New Zealand would participate in the tournament," Zhang told Xinhua. "Their absence should have been a good opportunity for our team to go further, but we failed to reach the final. The team finished their task, but not in the most satisfactory way."

"We had given the women's U18 team the goal of making the top three because we knew Australia and New Zealand would be playing in the Championship," Zhang added. "We didn't have a good start as we lost to Chinese Taipei and Japan during the group stage, but we were content with the final result."

Zhang pointed out a series of problems with the two national teams on the court, including underperformances during clutch time, poor fundamentals and lack of experience.

"The impact of three-year-long absence from international tournaments was huge," Zhang said. "When the men's team faced South Korea during the group stage, players were fearless and confident. Though they committed 26 turnovers, they grabbed 20 more rebounds than the opponents and won by 15 points."

"… However, when we faced South Korea again [in the semifinal], two of out three guards were totally lost in the game while the third one was halfway there," Zhang added. "Our players were totally outperformed by the opponents during the last moments of that game. We have a lot to reflect on and learn from the loss."

As for the women's team, Zhang pointed out that the players were performing well against weak opponents even though they lacked chemistry. Nonetheless, when they faced well-established teams like Chinese Taipei, they began to struggle. The good news was that the women's franchise played much better in the following games thanks to the help of coaches. They beat South Korea and Japan, which means they are a competitive squad.

Though both U18 franchises had problems exposed in the Championships, Zhang found some promising talents, including Yang Hansen, Zhang Junhao of the men's team, and Li Qingyang of the women's team.

To deepen the talent pool for the national teams, Zhang said the Basketball Association will hold more training camps around the country from October.

"We plan to, from October, focus on exploring players who were born between 2007 and 2008 first," Zhang told Xinhua. "There will be U16 Asian Championships next year for them to participate in. We will begin by helping them refine their skills at the training camps while developing grass-roots coaches. We will have multiple men's and women's teams play a tournament in Qinhuangdao before a 10-day training camp for players and training program for coaches."

Zhang said local teams, clubs and sports schools can all attend the training camps so the Basketball Association can collect enough information to establish a data center for promising talents. Moreover, instead of appointing coaches for underage teams right before the tournaments, the Basketball Association will begin to have long-term coaches for the young franchises for the sake of consistency.