The Dacin Tigers showed off their bench depth by playing eight regulars with four scoring in the double-digits to outlast Kinmen Liquor 85-75 at the Hsinchu Municipal Gymnasium on Saturday night in a big win.
The highly anticipated showdown between the top two squads in the league lived up to its billing, with the defending champs taking advantage of a deeper bench that provided the starters the necessary rest over the course of the second half to give them a four-point edge in the third and fourth and pull away with the win.
“We knew that we had to wear him [Kinmen Liquor’s Shawn ‘the Hawk’ Hawkins] down as much as possible so that he wouldn’t have much left in the tank in the final quarter,” Dacin head coach Chiou Da-tsong said after the game, describing how his team forced the top Kinmen Liquor scoring threat to take the ball strong to the hoop as opposed to knocking down the less physically taxing jumpers from the perimeters.
The strategy proved to be effective.
Hawkins wound up with a game-high 31 points and 15 rebounds nonetheless, even though his team would fall short by 10 against the defending champs in a losing effort.
The loss by the Distillers not only nipped their three-game winning streak in the bud, but also cost them a share of the lead in the league standings, which they held for a day after beating Bank of Taiwan the night before to force tie with the Tigers for the lead in the standings.
LEOPARDS 85, TAIWAN BEER 76
Backed by newcomer Alexus Froyle’s 25-point outing, including a clutch three from NBA range with under a minute remaining that pushed the lead back to six, the Taiwan Mobile Leopards upended Taiwan Beer in an 85-76 final on Saturday night to win back-to-back games for the first time this season.
What had been a comfortable 16-point lead at the half for the Leopards would dwindle to as few as three with under two minutes to play in the game, thanks to a relentless rally by the Beer Crew that brought Leopard skipper Cheng Chih-long to his feet virtually the entire fourth quarter.
But with the game on the line, Foyle would calmly deliver by nailing a big three that all but sealed the deal for Taiwan Mobile in a huge upset against the two-time champs.
LUXGENS 78, PURE YOUTH 73
Despite a double-20 effort by US great Jonathan Sanders, Pure Youth Construction (4-5) proved no match for the Yulon Luxgens as it dropped a 78-73 decision to the Luxgens on Saturday afternoon to fall below .500 for the first time this year.
Yulon finally broke out of a four-game slump with an outstanding game from Lu Cheng-rue and Tseng Wen-ding, whose 41 combined points accounted for more than half of their team’s total offense in a much needed win.
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