A timely resurgence by Liu Sheng-yao, who converted all four free throws in the final 16 seconds of the game, held off a tenacious rally by the Yulon Luxgens to give the Taiwan Mobile Leopards a thrilling 79-76 win at the Hsinchu Municipal Gymnasium on Friday evening.
The soft-spoken Leopard forward, who is finally seeing the floor time he deserves after two years of play, was able to rise to the occasion by nailing the clutch free throws against his former team after the Luxgens were forced to foul intentionally with less than a minute remaining.
“I have been playing a lot better as of late and I hope the trend will continue,” Liu said after the game.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
He has averaged nearly 20 points per game over a four-game stretch to help the Leopards — under the direction of coach Cheng Chih-long — pull off upset wins over Pure Youth Constructions and the Luxgens in the same span.
Seven straight points by Leopards newcomer Alexus Foyle in the first quarter sparked a 10-0 run that gave the Leopards a surprising 19-11 lead before the cats upped the cushion to a whopping 13 (46-33) by the half, highlighted by a buzzer-beating three-pointer from mid-court by Ou Yang Jing-hen.
The Luxgens finally got back on track with a solid third quarter, tied the game up in the fourth and led briefly before coming up empty in all four of their final possessions to let the game slip away in the end.
KINMEN LIQUOR 95, BOT 85
Red-hot Kinmen Liquor continued its winning streak on Friday with a convincing win over Bank of Taiwan (BOT), thanks to an outstanding effort by local boy Cheng Ren-wei and last week’s Player of the Week Shawn “the Hawk” Hawkins.
The Kinmen scoring tandem’s combined 63 points accounted for nearly two-thirds of the team’s total offense for the night has been the main reason the distillers are tied for the lead with the Dacin Tigers with a 7-2 record.
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