Zhejiang Guangsha defeated Shandong Gold 96-83 in Wednesday's CBA match, seeing off the latter from the playoffs of the domestic basketball league with one more round matches left in the regular season in 2010-2011.
Shandong dropped their record to 14 wins and 17 losses, 1 1/2 wins away from the eighth-placed Beijing Ducks (16-16), which completed their schedule after losing 121-120 to the Jilin Northeast Tigers in overtime.
The match settled down the battle for the playoff berthes. Teams from the 6th-8th placings will fight for the final placings in the last round on Friday.
Zhejiang Chouzhou beat Qingdao Doublestar 115-104 in an early game on Tuesday to secure their fifth placings with a record of 18-13.
The Chouzhou were 2-0 in matchup against the Guangsha (17-14), which were on the sixth placings.
Bayi Fubang, which lost 113-93 to the Shangxi Zhongyu, still have chance to surpass the Guangsha if they could win the last game against the bottom team Tianjin Ronggang and the Guangsha lose.
If the military team Bayi lose to Tianjin, they would finish on the eighth as Beijing could take the seventh placings by points difference as they were tied 1-1 in the regular season.
Shandong did not have much opportunity to toppled down the Guangsha thought the home team shot badly on three-pointers.
The Guangsha led all the way from the beginning and had as many as 19-point lead in the third quarter to finish the game easily.
Du Jiang made both of the last free-throws with 0.05 seconds left on the clock to beat Beijing in overtime.
Both teams fought as if it was a playoff match though there was nothing on stake. Beijing had already advance before Wednesday's game and Jilin were on the 13th by 12-19.
It was a game of honor and Jilin fought back from ten point down in the first half to tie the regular match by 107 to all and ran onto to a strong comeback win.
In Wednesday's other matches, Xinjiang Guanghui beat Liaoning Hunters 117-92, Jiangsu Dragons beat Tianjin Ronggang 113-90, Dongguan Marco Polo beat Fujian SBS 109-96, while Guangdong Hongyuan beat Foshan 123-116.