With a sub-par performance, Team Taiwan pulled off a win over Team Japan by a final score of 73-61 at the Taipei Physical Education college Gymnasium on Saturday night to kickoff the 2005 Jones's Cup Basketball Tournament.
This year's field of competitors consists of 10 teams: Australia, Russia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, India, Qatar, the US, the Republic of Kazakhstan and Taiwan, which will play in a round-robin format over a nine-day period.
The game against Japan was supposed to showcase the twin-tower scheme for Taiwan that features top Super Basketball League big men Tseng Wen-ding of the Yulon Dinos and Wu Dai-hao of the ETTV Antelopes.
But neither player was able to get into the flow on the offense, amassing only 15 points and 16 rebounds between them, and leaving the scoring burden to shooting guard Yang Yu-ming (Antelopes) and Bank of Taiwan's Yang Jing-ming with 13 and 11 points, respectively.
"It was a sloppy effort all around," head coach Lee Yun-kuan (Dinos) for Team Taiwan said after the game. "We didn't have our heads in the game most of the time."
The 19 turnovers committed by the rusty hosts were three more than their Japanese counterparts. Had the defense, which kept Team Japan to below-30 percent shooting in two-point field goals (10-for-35), not been there for Team Taiwan, the outcome of the game could have easily been reversed.
"Our performance was barely passable, especially given the fact that Japan sent only its second-stringers from their national team," Lee said.
Team Taiwan will play this year's competition without the services of the top three players in the SBL because of injuries: Chen Hsin-an (Dinos), Tien Lei (Dacin Tigers), and Lin "the Beast" Chih-jeh (Taiwan Beer).
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