A late-game surge by reserves Chen Tsu-wei and Chen Ching-wen rallied the Dacin Tigers from eight down to edge past the top-ranked Yulon Dinos by an 81-80 margin in Game 2 of first-round action at the Taipei Physical Education College Gymnasium on Saturday evening.
The win put the Tigers on the verge of sweeping the best-of-five series with a 2-0 lead as they look to pull off the upset of the year by eliminating the defending champs from the postseason plays.
Trailing the Dinos by eight with less than four minutes remaining in the contest, Chen Tsu-wei and Chen Ching-wen strung together three three's in a row to claw back a seemingly insurmountable deficit before the Tigers went on a 6-0 run that featured three spectacular back-door cuts to nail the thrilling victory.
Tien Lei promptly found the open man with the Dinos defense converging on him on all three of the back-door cuts, proving that he did not have to score the points himself to help the Tigers win.
"I don't know what happened out there, but they [Dinos] seemed to forget the guys that were cutting towards the basket when I had the ball out on the wing, that really hurt them," Tien said after the game.
He was an assist shy of an unprecedented triple-double with 20 points, eleven rebounds, and nine assists in the game.
A fast-paced first quarter that ended with Chen Ching-wen's buzzer-beating 60-foot three-pointer gave the Tigers a surprising nine-point lead (25-16) before the Dinos fought back with a dominant second quarter to trail by a deuce (42-40) at the half.
The Dinos carried their momentum into the third quarter with all-star center Tseng Wen-ding challenging the Tigers interior defense by pounding the low-post for 13 of the Dinos' 25 points in the quarter to help claim a 65-61 lead by the end of the third.
Four more points on consecutive buckets by Tseng at the start of the fourth opened an eight-point advantage for the Dinos. But that was the extent of their control of the game as the Tigers answered with their renowned three-point attack that cut the deficit to four, setting the stage for the late-game comeback.
Nevertheless, the Dinos had a chance to win the game with under ten seconds to play when Chen "Airman" Hsin-an drove the length of the floor to put up what would have been the game-winning shot with time expiring. But it was a tad long and the ball bounced off the back of the rim.
Hunters 94, Taiwan Beer 88
The Videoland Hunters forced a 1-all tie in the best-of-five series by winning Game 2 against Taiwan Beer 94-88 on Saturday night, thanks to a great team effort that placed five different players in double-digit scoring.
In a game where the offense had the upper hand, Taiwan Beer looked to its top scorer Lin "the Beast" Chih-jeh to shoulder the bulk of the scoring burden while the Hunters relied on three different men to get the job done.
Against the Beast's 18-point first half, the Hunters got big production from Yang Tseh-yi whose several hard drives to the hoop netted the speedy slasher 14 points in the first half.
Then came a 13-point third quarter by the Hunters' Lee Wei-min, who picked up the scoring slack against the Beast's 16 points in an evenly fought third before Chen Hui finished off the game with 13 fourth-quarter points to wrap up the win.
"It was a great all-around effort by us," Hunters coach Liu Chih-wei said after the game.
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