South Korea Suffers 38-Point Defeat to Germany, Misses Women's World Cup Quarterfinals

The South Korean women's national basketball team suffered a heavy defeat against Germany in the qualification playoffs for the quarterfinals of the 2026 FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup, failing to advance to the final eight.

Head coach Suho's South Korean squad (ranked 15th in the FIBA rankings) lost 56–94 to Germany (ranked 11th) in the quarterfinal qualification match held in Berlin, Germany, on the 9th (KST).

Having secured their 17th consecutive World Cup appearance by passing the final qualifiers in March this year, the women's national team thus concluded their tournament campaign without reaching the quarterfinals.

The last time South Korea advanced to the quarterfinals of the Women's Basketball World Cup was in 2010.

In this tournament, 16 countries competed in the group stage across four groups, with each group winner advancing directly to the quarterfinals. The second and third-place teams played in qualification playoffs, with the winning teams joining the quarterfinals.

South Korea started the tournament on a high note by comfortably defeating Nigeria in their opening group match, but subsequently suffered consecutive losses to France and Hungary, finishing third in Group B and advancing to the quarterfinal playoffs.

However, South Korea ultimately failed to overcome Germany's height advantage, plagued by players standing in the 190 cm range.

Germany, boasting seven players in the 190 cm range, recorded an average roster height of 187 cm for this tournament.

Without key pillar JISOO participating in this tournament, the South Korean national team lacked a single player in the 190 cm range, leaving them with an average height of 177 cm.

Another negative factor for the national team was that JIN AN (Hana Bank), who served as the starting center in this tournament, was unable to play on this day due to poor physical condition.

South Korea grabbed only 30 rebounds on this day, falling significantly behind Germany (46 rebounds).

After matching Germany evenly until the middle of the first quarter, South Korea conceded 8 unanswered points from an 11–11 tie, surrendering the momentum and trailing behind. The deficit widened further to 29–46 after the second quarter.

The match was effectively decided near the end of the third quarter as the gap widened to 30 points (38–68). After benching their key players with about 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter at 56–85, South Korea finished the game conceding 9 consecutive points.

Lee Ha-ran put up a fight with a team-high 21 points, while ace shooter Kang Lee-seul added 17 points, including 3 three-pointers.

Head coach Suho reflected during the post-match press conference, "We expected a difficult match, and both the players and I prepared thoroughly, but due to our lack of height and the absence of big man resources recovering from injuries, neither our defense nor our offense clicked."

Coach Suho added, "The players learned a lot, and it was a great learning experience for me as well. We will need to research different ways to face teams with great height like Germany. While we will maintain our style given our smaller stature, we need to raise our shooting accuracy and reinforce our defense."

Kang Lee-seul shared her thoughts, saying, "Germany was much stronger than when we met them in March (at the World Cup final qualifiers). We tried to show our best possible performance, but lacking in height and physical stature clearly exposed our shortcomings in this match. Although the score gap was wide, we were able to see hope throughout the tournament that we can become a stronger team, and we learned a lot."

The national team will now prepare for the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games.

Grouped in Group C of the Asian Games alongside Taiwan, Malaysia, and Mongolia, South Korea will play its first match against Malaysia on the 18th.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.