Showing strong determination from the start of the game, Taiwan Beer swarmed past the Dacin Tigers in Game 4 of the Super Basketball League (SBL) Finals with a 79-66 victory at Taipei Physical Education College Gymnasium on Saturday evening to knot the best-of-seven series up at 2-2.
The win not only put the beer crew on even terms with the Tigers, but also gave them a much-needed confidence boost following Friday night's devastating 89-71 defeat at the hands of the Tigers.
"We knew we had to have fresh legs in the game all the time, so I asked our bench to pick it up a notch because a lot of them were going to see floor time tonight. I'm glad they answered the challenge," Taiwan Beer coach Yen Jia-hua said after the game.
Yen went deep into the bench, playing 11 men to snare the critical victory.
Taiwan Beer benefitted from outstanding efforts by Lin Guan-luen, who scored a personal playoffs high of 13 points, and Wang Jien-wei, whose blanket coverage on Tien Lei held the Dacin scoring icon to just 12 points in the game. Tien had averaged 25 points in the previous three games.
The contest began with the beer crew outhustling the Tigers right away to claim an 18-15 lead after the first quarter. Then came an 18-0 run by the streaky beer crew that completely shut down Dacin as Taiwan Beer took a comfortable 37-24 lead at the half.
Even though the Tigers crew would regroup with two offensive bursts that made the third quarter more competitive, Taiwan Beer never lost control of the game as it answered with two 7-0 scoring runs to open leads as large as 23 points during the second half.
Both squads sent in the reserves in a meaningless final five minutes in the eventual Taiwan Beer win.
"We couldn't get the pressure off our chest tonight, especially after the big win last night, but I am not going to take anything from them [Taiwan Beer] because they played a heck of a game on defense to hold us to 66 points," Dacin coach Liu Jia-fa said in the post-game press conference.
Inability to keep the beer crew off the glass cost the Tigers the game as they were outrebounded by Taiwan Beer with a whopping 45-27 margin. Fourteen of the 45 rebounds by Taiwan Beer came off the offensive glass and led to at least a dozen points from easy put-back baskets.
Top Taiwan Beer scorer Lin "the Beast" Chih-jeh did not have his usual 25-plus point production, scoring only 19 in the game.
Hunters 94, Dinos 85
Winning their second game in as many days, the Videoland Hunters clinched the SBL consolation series with a 94-85 win over the Yulon Dinos in Game 4 earlier on Saturday to end the season with a third-place finish.
Jonathan Sanders closed out an exceptional season in a Hunters uniform with 23 points and 19 boards in the game, providing his team the leadership that the US all-purpose forward was meant to deliver. Even though the Hunters did not make it into the Finals, their series victory over the defending champs showed a huge improvement from a fifth-place finish last year.
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