The SBL’s regular season came to an end with Kinmen Liquor downing the Taiwan Mobile Leopards 83-61 at the Taipei County Sports Complex in Sinjhuang on Sunday evening.
It was not a particularly meaningful game as far as postseason play was concerned, since all four of the spots for the upcoming playoffs had been determined more than a week ago, with Pure Youth Construction clinching the fourth and final postseason berth by virtue of a crucial Kinmen Liquor loss that eliminated Kinmen Liquor from the playoff race.
But for all the hoop fans around the country who hope for a sustainable future for the league, it was a tremendous achievement.
The fans breathed a collective sigh of relief in the wake of an unusually eventful regular season that included two walk-outs by the broadcasting carrier, the serious threat of an indefinite holdout by the Yulon Luxgens, the absence of a regular playing venue during the renovation of the Taipei Physical Education College Gymnasium and the apparent absence of a capable governing body that can really control all seven teams in the league.
In spite of all the off-court drama, the postseason will proceed as planned on Friday at the Taipei County Sports Complex in Sinjhuang, with the top-seeded Dacin Tigers taking on Pure Youth (fourth seed) and the Luxgens (second seed) battling Taiwan Beer (third seed) in a best-of-five round before the winners play for the title in the annual best-of-seven SBL Finals.
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