SBL action switches to the Hsinchu County Arena this evening with the Taiwan Mobile Leopards taking on Bank of Taiwan followed by the showdown between the Yulon Luxgens and Pure Youth Construction.
It will be the third venue in four weeks to host SBL games because of the reconstruction of the Taipei Physical Education College Gymnasium which is expected to be completed later this year.
Taiwan Mobile will have to make do without newly acquired center Mario Boggan after the big American was tagged with a four-game suspension for swinging his elbow at a Taiwan Beer player on Sunday in what ended up being a bench-clearing brawl that led to the suspension of nine players and coaches.
In an attempt to minimize Boggan’s absence, the Leopards will likely go with a smaller and more mobile lineup featuring perimeter threats Luo Hsing-liang and Ou-yang Jing-hen as they look to attack their opponents defense with a half-court game heavily reliant on the outside shot.
The Leopards patented zone defense will have to work wonders as far as shutting down a Bank of Taiwan attack led by emerging forwards Hsu Chih-chiang and Lin Chuin-fong who can both run the floor well and break the zone with smart passing and sharp shooting.
YULON VS PURE YOUTH
All eyes will be on the matchup between the centers: Tseng Wen-ding of the Luxgens and Jien Jia-hong of Pure Youth who are both graduates of Tsai Hsing Senior High School.
The edge will definitely go to an older and stronger Tseng who leads his team in scoring and rebounding with 17.2 points and 8.0 rebounds per game compared to Jien’s 12.2 points and 5.8 rebounds per game.
Nevertheless Jien has matured tremendously over the past two seasons to become one of the top three centers in the league with sound foot work and an outside shot that forces the defender to play him more closely outside the paint.
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