China crashed out of the quarter-finals of the Athens Olympics women's basketball with a stunning 79-77 loss to New Zealand in a preliminary group B match on Friday.

With their third stright loss following an opening win over South Korea, the Chinese women, who aimed for a top six finish in the 12-team tournament, have to go to 9th-12th deciders even if they beat the mighty defending champion United States in Sunday's final round preliminaries.

Zhang Fan seemed to become China's savior as she came from the bench to bury a three-pointer 6.4 seconds from the end to tie it at 77-all. However, Megan Compain, who scored eight of her 12 points in the fourth quarter, made a jump shot with 0.4 second to go to seal the second victory and a berth in top eight for New Zealand.

"It's really disappointing," said Sui Feifei, who had game-high21 points for China. "This time I got an idea about how cruel the competition of the Olympics is."

With China missing the Sydney Games four years ago, all the Chinese players are making their Olympic debut at Athens.

Chinese team head coach Gong Luming thought her team was not prepared well enough mentally for the crucial game.

"It's a must-win game for us, but we did not prepare the best we could as we had done before the game against South Korea," Gong said.

"Our players believed we could win the game, but did not know how to make it," he added.

Compain also made four free throws in four tries earlier in the fourth quarter to give New Zealand a 77-72 advantage with 37 seconds remaining.

Gina Farmer led five players from New Zealand in double digits with 19 points and Donna Loffhagen and Aneka Kerr added 18 and 17 respectively.

Wang Ling came from the bench to add 15 for China, who shot 6-for-13 from the line and was outrebounded 41-32.

(Xinhua News Agency August 20, 2004)