Scoring early and often, Taiwan Beer outscored the Dacin Tigers 26-9 in the opening quarter and managed to hold off a tenacious rally by the Tigers in the final quarter for a 78-70 win in Game 5 of the Super Basketball League (SBL) Finals at the Taipei Physical Education College Gymnasium on Sunday night.
The win was the beer crew's third in the best-of-seven series and leaves them just one victory shy of their first championship title.
"The key to our win tonight was a solid defense during the first half that put them [the Tigers] in a hole in a hurry," Taiwan Beer coach Yen Jia-hua said after the game.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Stellar performances by Lin "the Beast" Chih-jeh, with 14 of Taiwan Beer's 26 first-quarter points on a 28-point night, and Chen Shih-nian, whose four clutch free throws late in the game gave his team a commanding eight-point lead, also were crucial for the victorious beer crew that never trailed in the game.
The contest began with Taiwan Beer taking charge of the game early by stringing together a stunning 16-0 run in the first few minutes.
The score read 19-3 before the Tigers managed to come up with a 6-0 run to cut the Taiwan Beer lead to 10 points.
The beer crew then answered with a 7-0 run to close out an intense first quarter with a 26-9 lead.
Another 7-0 run by Taiwan Beer to start the second quarter put the Tigers further back at 33-9, forcing Dacin to call a timeout.
The timeout seemed to help as the Tigers outscored the beer crew 19-9 to finish out the first half down 42-28.
Back-to-back 3-pointers by Tien Lei that sparked a 14-5 run early in the third would cut the Taiwan Beer lead to as few as five, but Ho Sho-cheng and Luo Hsin-liang made sure the beer crew would increase its cushion to 10 with six unanswered points to end the third quarter.
The Tigers then went with their patented 3-point attack in an attempt to fight back and it took them to within four of the beer crew before four straight free throws by Chen iced the game for the brew crew in the final minute.
Games 6 will be played on Saturday and Game 7 will be held on Sunday if necessary.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier