HANGZHOU, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- The silver medal that the Chinese men's volleyball team won at the Hangzhou Asian Game is a great confidence boost, said China head coach Wu Sheng on Tuesday.

Despite losing to Iran 19-25, 25-14, 25-22 and 26-24 Tuesday evening, China recorded their best finish at the Asiad since the Doha Asian Games in 2006, when they lost to South Korea in the final.

"This silver medal is important for our boys. It gave them confidence ahead of the Olympic qualifiers in Xi'an," Wu told Xinhua.

Wu believed that high level competition like Tuesday's final was very valuable experience for his team.

"We need to have more games like this to improve ourselves, especially our mentality," Wu added. "Our players did their best today, and we had a good game, but the Iranian team is more experienced and their stronger mentality helped them win through."

China will face Bulgaria, Belgium, Mexico, Canada, the Netherlands, Argentina and Poland in the Paris Olympic men's volleyball Qualifiers Pool C, which was slated from September 30 to October 8.

"All the teams we will face there are very strong teams, and we can gain more confidence if we play well against them," said Wu.

Chinese captain Jiang Chuan felt sorry for the loss but vowed to do better in the future.

"We had our chance, but we could not take it," said Jiang, who scored 13 points for China. "We did a great job in the first set, but we were not able to cope with the changes they made in the next three sets as well as we should."

"We also made some unforced errors at crucial moments. I think that was also learning experience for us, hopefully we won't make such mistakes when we play such important games like this one," Jiang added. Enditem

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