I managed to watch three of Ziyu’s games, including the loss to Australia in the fiba final. She’s quite slow and doesn’t move well, and she tires easily. On the positive side, she shoots well on FTs and has a soft touch. Her hands are strong enough to hold the ball securely with one hand, and once she catches the ball she rarely brings it down. She usually manages to avoid fouling, and this may also be because she doesn’t move very fast.
Smaller teams were helpless against Ziyu, and the rest of the Chinese team is quite high energy. They play fierce defense and have an effective transition game. Even with Ziyu on the bench, they played an effective pressing game and could still score. Australia was the first team they encountered with several bigs and a comparably energetic frontcourt. By the 4th quarter, Ziyu seemed to run out of gas and sat for the last 5 or so minutes, and the rest of the team had slowed down, Australia took over and utterly dominated.
In one trip down the floor, I think Ziyu scored like 8 points in a row — an entry pass leads to a score and foul, she converts the FT or misses it and China gets the rebound and repeated the process, or steals the inbounds pass after the make. Watching a sequence like this, the natural conclusion to draw is that it’s more important to focus on stopping the rebound than to challenge the shot. But boxing out when she’s already in position is not at all simple. Ziyu is not easy to push around and the effort could well produce as many fouls on the defense as challenging her shot did.
It’s easy to picture a pro career for Ziyu, though I’d be surprised if she ends up playing D1 college ball in the U.S. In a league like the W, she’ll encounter a lot of much stronger athletes though no one near her height. Given how slow she is, a coach would have to build a team around her and it’s unclear whether this could be a winning strategy.
