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'Airman' flies high after Player of the Week recognition

Leading his club to a pair of impressive wins over a terrific weekend of play, Yulon Dinos team icon Chen "Airman" Hsin-an earned the Player of the Week honor in the Super Basketball League (SBL) for the fourth time this season.

The premier power forward, who leads the league in scoring with 21.7 points per game, outperformed fellow SBL stars Taiwan Beer's Lin "the Beast" Chih-jeh and dmedia Numen's American Jonathan Sanders in two matchups last weekend by racking up 23 points in each game.

"It's nice to win it [the player of the week honor], but it's more important that the team does well," the Airman said after learning of his selection for the weekly award.

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Chen and his Dino mates will have an excellent chance to pad their lead in the standings with three contests against weaker opponents this weekend.

They start with tonight's battle against the Dacin Tigers, before tomorrow's meeting with Bank of Taiwan and Sunday's showdown versus the Taiwan Mobile Leopards.

Assuming that the Dinos triumph in the contests, their lead over the Numen will likely grow to three games, which should be ample for them to clinch the regular season title with the end of the season just two weeks away.

"Getting the top seed berth will definitely be a plus, but we still have to approach each game wholeheartedly so that we aren't caught looking ahead too much," Dinos skipper Lee Yun-kuan explained when asked about the Dinos postseason outlook.

Tonight's Games

In addition to the Dinos-Tigers game, scheduled for 6pm this evening at the Taipei County Sports Complex, the Bank of Taiwan take on Pure Youth Construction in an interesting matchup with both squads fresh off upset wins over worthy opponents last week.

It was the builders who dominated the Tigers in a battle for the fourth-and-final playoff spot last Sunday.

That put them one game ahead of the struggling cats for No. 4 in the standings while the bankers shocked the Tigers last Saturday to claim only their fourth win in 24 games this season.

Pure Youth Construction will undoubtedly look to pound the ball inside with big man Jien Jia-hong (108kg) leading the way against a smaller bankers' interior defense.

As for the bankers, they need a big game from frontcourt tandem Lin Chuin-fong and Hsu Chih-chiang in order to stand a chance against the builders, who will start as favorites.
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