Unable to overcome a size disadvantage like they had done in the opener against South Korea, Taiwan fell to a bigger and younger Australia squad 80-67 at the Taipei County Sinjhuang Gymnasium on Friday night to even their record at 1-1 in this year’s Jones Cup.
Australia virtually controlled the glass at both ends of the floor with a 40-28 rebounds margin in a game they never trailed.
The inability to win the rebound battle was not the only problem Taiwan experienced as their perimeter game also turned stone-cold and allowed Australia to stay comfortably inside the paint to guard against the little offense that the hosts could muster from close range.
“Anytime you play like the way we did, it’s pretty darn hard to win a game,” skipper Chung Kwang-suk said after the game, lamenting the impact of the absence of Tseng Wen-ding (Yulon Dinos) and Wu Dai-hao (Taiwan Beer), the two premier centers in the Super Basketball League.
Leading the attack with limited support was Yang Jing-min (Taiwan Beer), who led Taiwan’s scoring for the second straight game with 14 points.
Even though five different players ended up scoring in double-digits on the night, it did not mean much to an Australia lineup that towered over their Taiwanese counterparts by an average of 6cm a man (196 cm to 190 cm) and with five players over 200cm.
Tonight’s Game
Taiwan take on Jordan at 7pm tonight in an uphill battle as the defending champions from the Middle East will undoubtedly try to capitalize on their height advantage (average 197.5 cm) by pounding the ball inside the paint against a smaller Taiwan lineup.
Rediscovering their long-range shooting will be key to whether Taiwan can keep pace with Jordan or become another victim to an attack that is capable of blowing the game wide open early in proceedings.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with