In its best performance of the tournament by far, Team Taiwan defeated Australia 95-82 during Jones's Cup action at the Taipei Physical Education College Gymnasium on Tuesday.
The win gave the hosts a 3-1 record in the nine-game, round-robin competition that began last Saturday.
The win was Taiwan's second straight, following a 111-70 blowout over Team India on Monday, as it bounced back from a humiliating 95-74 loss to Team USA on Sunday.
The game against the club from down under began with the Taiwanese taking an early 16-6 lead on the strength of big men Wu Dai-hao (ETTV Antelopes) and Tseng Wen-ding (Yulon Dinos) inside the paint, before the Aussies fought back to close the gap at 24-19 by the end of the first quarter.
Several sloppy plays by Team Taiwan early in the second quarter allowed Australia to a 31-27 lead before Team Taiwan regrouped to end the half with a 10-point advantage (48-38).
The third quarter featured a scoring run by each team, the first of which got the Australians within a point of Taiwan in the early going, until Taiwan answered with a 13-2 run of its own to lead by a dozen after three quarters of play.
An 11-2 scoring spurt by the Aussies in the final quarter kept them in the game until back-to-back fast break layups by Taiwan with under two minutes to play put the Australians away for good.
Tseng led a Taiwanese squad that had five players scoring in double figures, with 16 points and six rebounds, while Stephen Weigh of Team Australia led all scorers with 17 points for the game.
Taiwan shot an amazing 69 percent (22-for-32) from the two-point range against an Australian defense that could not catch up to the opened man most of the time, in its best shooting performance of the tournament thus far.
Taiwan 74, USA 95
Outmanned and outgunned, Taiwan barely put up a fight against Team USA in a 95-74 loss ont Sunday.
Not only did the Americans hold an overwhelming height advantage, they were highly accurate from the perimeter, something that took Taiwan head coach Lee Yun-kuan by surprise.
"It was unbelievable the way they shot the threes in the game," Lee said.
"Everything was dropping for them.
The Americans led by a dozen after the first quarter (31-19), only to extend their lead by 18 in the second quarter.
Even though Taiwan would reduced the deficit by half with four three-pointers during the third quarter, Terrance Johnson responded with a series of three-pointers early in the fourth quarter to put Team USA up by 22 points.
Yang Yu-ming (Antelopes) led Team Taiwan with 16 points, followed by Bank of Taiwan great Yang Jing-ming's 15 for the night.
As for Team USA, Johnson and Stephon Bradford had 17 points apiece, followed by Marcus Douthit and Roosevelt Brown, who chipped in 16 points apiece to account for the bulk of the US' offense.
Taiwan 111, India 70
Monday's contest against India was a foregone conclusion by the end of the first half when Taiwan more than doubled up the score with a 66-32 half-time lead.
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