Taiwan's university baseball team lost to the defending champions the United States 7-8 in the preliminary round of the fifth World University Baseball Championship in Tokyo Sunday. The two teams played to a 6-6 tie after nine innings. In overtime, the Taiwanese team scored one point in the first half of the 10th inning, while the U.S. team scored one point both in the second half of the 10th inning and the second half of the 11th inning to edge out the Taiwanese team. Taiwan's manager Yeh Chih-shien said that Taiwan fared quite well although it made some mistakes. Yeh attributed Taiwan's loss to the fact that some of its players suffered injuries and that the opposing team was one of the strongest. However, Yeh said, Taiwan stands a good chance of winning its game against Sri Lanka Monday. If Taiwan wins, it will finish third in the preliminary round in group A and will meet host Japan which is in group B. Group A is made up of Taiwan, Canada, the U.S. and Sri Lanka, while the group B is composed of China, South Korea, Cuba and Japan. The finals of the competition are scheduled for Aug. 7. 