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Lai Guo-hong helps Hunters down Antelopes

Lai Guo-hong's late-game surge, with eight of his team-high 16 points coming during the final quarter, carried the Videoland Hunters past the ETTV Antelopes in an 80-77 win at the Taipei Physical Education College Gymnasium on Saturday afternoon.

The veteran center came off the bench with 21-plus minutes of floor time against a depleted Antelopes frontcourt and shot a solid 7-for-10 from the floor to propel his team to its first back-to-back wins in nearly a month.

"Coach Liu said I would have a big game against them inside and he was right," Lai said after the game, referring to Hunters head coach Liu Chih-wei's plan to exploit the smaller and weaker Antelopes interior defense that relied heavily on power forward Delvin Thomas.

In addition to Lai's valiant effort, fellow forward Jonathan Sanders also chipped in 15 points and a game-high 14 rebounds to account for nearly half of the Hunter's total offensive production.

The game began with the Antelopes jumping to a fast start on the strength of point guard Huang Bao-tzu's penetration that led to several easy baskets in an 18-13 affair after one quarter of play.

Then a sluggish Hunters attack awoke scoring 28 second-quarter points to close out the first half with a small 41-38 advantage.

ETTV regained a five-point lead briefly during the third quarter before settling for a 60-60 tie at the start of the decisive fourth, setting the stage for Lai's late-game surge.

Four different players managed double-digit scores for the Antelopes with Thomas' 21 leading the way. That was the extent of their offensive success as there were only three other players who managed to make it into the scorebook with a total of 14 points in the game.

Taiwan Beer 118, Bank of Taiwan 86

Taiwan Beer set a new scoring mark for the season on Saturday night with 118 points in a blowout win over Bank of Taiwan.

The 118-86 decision in favor of the Beer crew dealt the Bankers the ninth defeat in their past ten contests, adding insult to injury to a slumping squad that had high expectations for this season after making its first-ever playoff appearance last season.

"We really haven't done anything too different this year compared to last year, but the results are black and white," a disappointed Bank of Taiwan skipper Wei Chen-ming said after the game.

Perhaps his team missed their top point guard Wu Yong-ren, who joined the Hunters in a highly publicized offseason deal.

It took a near all-out effort by the undermanned Bankers to keep pace with Taiwan Beer in a 31-23 game at the end of the first quarter before several mini scoring runs by Taiwan Beer translated into a commanding 59-38 lead at the half.

With leads as large as 25 points, Taiwan Beer gave its reserve players some game experience in the third quarter which led to a 13-4 run for the Bankers who ended the quarter on a high note.

But that was as close as the Bankers would get to salvaging the game with the Beer crew answering with a 12-0 counter-attack that sealed their victory early in the fourth quarter.

Taiwan Beer's Wu Chih-yuan turned in his second double-double of the season by racking up 22 points and a dozen rebounds providing more than adequate support for top scorer Lin "the Beast" Chih-jeh, who netted 29 points and nine boards.

Dinos 95, Eagles 92

A 36-point, fourth-quarter rally by the Yulon Dinos helped the league-leaders escape from what would have been an embarrassing loss to the last-placed Azio Eagles in a game which finished 95-92 earlier on Saturday evening.

The Dinos fell victims to a ferocious Eagles attack that doubled up on the defending champs in a 30-15 first quarter before some not-so-kind words by head coach Lee Yun-kuan finally rallied his troops to finish out the half trailing the Eagles 44-40.

After a hard-fought third quarter that brought the Dinos to within one of the Eagles (60-59) at the start of the fourth quarter, the scales finally tipped the Dinos' way for good as they took an eight-point lead (86-78) with less than three minutes left.
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