Overcoming deficits as large as 10 points in the second half, the Videoland Hunters rallied with a tremendous fourth quarter to beat Taiwan Beer 89-85 on Saturday evening for their third straight win.
The battle between two of the unbeaten squads in the league began as the beer crew came out firing to lead the Hunters 26-22 after 10 minutes of play.
After a sloppy second quarter by both teams in which Taiwan Beer still outscored the Hunters for a comfortable 44-36 lead at the half, Jonathan Sanders of the Hunters decided to crank it up by swarming the offensive glass to give his team second chances.
And with Sanders' spark, the Hunters were able to pull within three of Taiwan Beer by the start of the fourth quarter before finally prevailing.
Superior three-point shooting by the Hunters (10-for-21 compared to Taiwan Beer's 13-for-31) along with outstanding rebounding (43-to-28) helped Videoland nail down the win.
Sanders and fellow shooting guard Yang Tseh-yi led the Hunters with 22 points each to account for nearly half of the team's total offense.
As for the brewers, top scorer Lin "the Beast" Chih-jeh and three-point threat Ho Sho-cheng scored 23 points each in a losing cause.
Bank of Taiwan 84, Eagles 81
Yueh Ying-li's three-point play with less than seven seconds remaining broke an 81-all tie for the bankers as they topped the Eagles 84-81 to stay perfect at 2-0.
Without their big center Jien Jia-hong, who was serving a four-game suspension for fighting in Friday night's contest against the Dacin Tigers, the Eagles played like they had something to prove in the first quarter and took a 12-point lead midway through the second quarter before the bankers answered with two scoring spurts to close out the first half with a 48-47 lead.
After an evenly matched third quarter where neither team seemed able to pull away, the Eagles mustered a 15-4 run to go up 79-68 with 3:30 left.
But the bankers' defense held them to only a pair of free throws after that before Yueh's late-game heroics delivered the victory.
Four different players scored in the double digits for each team, with the bankers' Yang Jing-min and the Eagles' Hong Chih-shan netting 19 points each.
Tigers 109, Antelopes 83
Wang Chih-chuin's career-high, 34-point effort paved the way for the Dacin Tigers as they thrashed the ETTV Antelopes 109-83 on Saturday afternoon for their second win in as many days.
The fourth-year point guard for Dacin slashed through a porous Antelopes defense at will with numerous drives to the hoop that resulted in baskets or free throws on shooting fouls.
His outstanding 9-for-15 shooting from the floor and 11-for-13 effort from behind the charity stripe were simply too much for the Antelopes.
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