Kinmen Liquor commence this week’s play in the SBL against the Dacin Tigers at 6pm tonight before Taiwan Beer take on Bank of Taiwan at 8pm at the Hsinchu Municipal Gymnasium.
Kinmen Liquor face a tough weekend with matches against the top three teams in the league — the Tigers, the Yulon Luxgens (tomorrow) and Taiwan Beer on Sunday.
Kinmen Liquor have not beaten any of the top three teams through its first seven contests this season, with two of their three wins coming at the expense of the last-placed bankers (1-7).
“We’ll definitely have to pace ourselves if we want to get through this week with any kind of success, but that doesn’t mean we will take any one of them lightly in the interest of saving ourselves for another game,” Kinmen coach Luo Tien-jin said in an interview.
Kinmen Liquor will be looking to continue their dominance at the glass with their league-leading 40.6 rebounds per game and to control the pace of the game by not getting into a high-scoring affair in any of the three games.
Cutting back on their league-worst 18.4 turnovers per contest will also be imperative for Kinmen Liquor since all three of the teams on their schedule this weekend are known for being able to convert turnovers into fastbreak points.
Kinmen Liquor will not be the big underdogs tonight because the bankers will have even a harder time going up against a heavily favored Taiwan Beer, winners of three straight.
Fresh off a winless three-game weekend of their own, the bankers will more than have their hands full against a potent attack that features Yang Jing-min and Lin “the Beast” Chih-jeh.
As if Yang and Lin were not enough, the bankers will also have to defend against the inside presence of arguably the best center in the league, Wu Dai-hao.
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