体坛英语新闻：WCBA expands to 18 teams in new season

BEIJING, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Women's Chinese Basketball Association (WCBA) will raise the curtain for the 2018-19 regular season on Oct. 18, expanding from 14 to 18 teams for a total of 306 matches in 34 rounds.

For the new season, Bayi and Shenbu have combined into one squad, while five teams will make their debuts in the league, namely Henan, Tianjin, Hubei, Hebei and Fujian.

The curtain raiser will feature Xinjiang and Daqing on Oct. 18, with the other first-round games slated for Oct. 20. The regular season will conclude on Jan. 19, 2019, with top eight teams advancing to the playoffs.

The All-Star weekend has been scheduled for January next year.

The league has been growing rapidly during the recent years, as it was enlarged to 14 from 12 last season, when Beijing won 21 out of 26 matches to lead the 2017-18 regular season and went on to sweep Shanxi 3-0 in the finals to be crowned as three-time champions.

The new season is expected to attract more overseas players while the local young athletes will be encouraged and given more opportunities to play the key moments.