Bank of Taiwan shooting guard Chang Bo-sheng was voted the Player of the Week in the Super Basketball League for his tremendous contribution in guiding the Bankers to a pair of upset wins last week.
The second-year man out of Tsai Hsin Senior High School, who began the season as a reserve on the Bankers' bench, made the most of an opportunity to start by draining 10 three-pointers on a 38-point night to help Bank of Taiwan pull off an upset win over the Taiwan Mobile Leopards last Saturday, before making it two in row in the win over the league-leading Yulon Dinos on Sunday with 21 points in the game.
"We don't want to be seen as an automatic win for our opponents, so they'd better get ready to play us from now on," Chang said after learning of his selection for the coveted weekly honor.
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Prior to the Bankers' two-win weekend, they had only won one game in 14 to be sitting last in the standings.
"Not having a clear role on the team hurt me earlier on, but now that's fixed, we should do a lot better in the future," Chang said.
His team will have a chance to make it three straight in the big game against the Dacin Tigers at the Taipei County Sports Complex this evening, where the Cats will look to bounce back from a tough loss to Taiwan Beer last weekend and more importantly get their record back to .500.
Shutting down the Tigers' three-point attack will be the Bankers' top priority in this game, as Dacin will not have the services of inside threat Tien Lei, who is out until at least March recovering from a thumb injury.
Following the game against the Tigers, the Bankers will take on the dmedia Numen in the afternoon game on Sunday, where a physical game is expected against a hard-rebounding dmedia front three, that features the SBL's top rebounder Jonathan Sanders.
Other than trying to box out Sanders to minimize the damage the American forward can inflict, the Bankers must get a big game out of Chang and forward Hsu Chih-chiang offensively in order to keep it respectable.
Tonight's games
In addition to the Bankers' game with the Tigers, the Numen will take on the Leopards at the Taipei County Sports Complex at 8pm tonight.
It will be revenge time for Numen, since it was the Leopards who frustrated them with a 73-67 win in their last meeting on Dec. 30 that handed dmedia a winless week with a 0-3 record.
The Numen offense will need to be on top of their game in order to overcome a Leopards' defense that has stopped their opponents' from scoring more than 70 points more often than not this season.
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