China beats Puerto Rico in Olympic women’s hoops, puts itself in contention to advance to quarters

VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ, France (AP) — Li Meng scored 18 points and China topped Puerto Rico 80-58 on Saturday in the Olympic women’s basketball tournament to keep its chances alive of reaching the quarterfinals.

Now China will have to wait until Sunday to see if it advances to the elimination round. The top two teams in each group as well as the next best two squads will advance to Paris for the quarterfinals on Wednesday. The tiebreaker to determine the final two slots is point differential. China has a point differential of minus-1 points in its three games.

Spain faces Serbia later Saturday to determine the winner of Group A.

China (1-2) was up six points after one quarter and 40-29 at the half. It extended its lead to 16 in the third quarter on Li’s 3-pointer and Puerto Rico never got within single digits again.

Arella Guirantes led Puerto Rico (0-3) with 20 points.

The loss ended a disappointing Games for Puerto Rico, which remained winless in two Olympic appearances. The Puerto Ricans had good chances to win their first two games before falling by three points to Serbia and one to Spain.

Puerto Rico came into the Olympics after reaching the quarterfinals of the 2022 World Cup.