VK Basketball to take on China U18 team in exhibition series

For fans of basketball in the Lower Mainland, there’s an exciting new series coming up for you. Starting August 28th, the Chinese U18 girls national team will be playing select teams that competed at bballnationals. This is fresh off the heels of the Canada vs China series featuring the men’s national teams that captivated crowds in Vancouver and Victoria just under two months ago.

“When the opportunity comes to play this high quality team, we jumped at it” said Anthony Beyrouti, founder of VK Basketball. “We wanted to make it a cool experience for all involved so we signed up with Langley Events Centre to make a best in class production.”

[The China U18 Women’s National Basketball Team] is made of members selected from provincial, university and club teams in China who are aged from 17-18 years old” explained a spokesperson for the team. “The team has played a few scrimmages with adult basketball teams in China and a few teams from overseas, [and they have] about equal amount of wins and losses.”

The first game will be against the Burnaby Ballers on August 28th, the Open Division team from bballnationals consisting of players from the the lower mainland. They will then play VK U17 Black the next night, the team that won the U17 championship at bballnationals 71-58.

The China U18 team then follows that up with U17 runners up VK Red on September 4th, and then end their tour with a game against Sentinel West Van U17 Select on the 5th.

The China U18 team hopes to “gain some experience with overseas games as well leaning from Canadian teams” they explain. The team will be competing in the FIBA Asia U18 Championship which will be held in Bangalore, India at the end of October. That will be the qualifying tournament for FIBA Asia at the 2019 FIBA Under-19 tournament, so you can expect them to put their best foot forward to try and win these games.

“The high caliber of play should be very exciting for those in attendance” explained Beyrouti. “For VK Basketball, this is a very special group of 19 players that we've put together and this will be a unique opportunity to finish off their summer [as] a group.”

All games will begin at 7:00 pm. The first three games will be held at Langley Events Centre, while the final one will be at Sentinel Secondary in West Vancouver. Each game will be streamed on VK Basketball's Facebook page, and admission is by donation.

Written by: Nick Bondi