The much-anticipated 32nd William Jones Cup International Basketball Tournament will begin at the Taipei County Hsinchuang Gymnasium today, with the Taiwan College All-Stars taking on the Philippines at 3pm this afternoon.
The annual mid-summer basketball classic that began in Taipei 31 years ago will feature two local teams, the Taiwanese national team along with the College All-Stars, and five other foreign squads mostly from Asia — defending champs Iran, as well as Japan, Lebanon, the Philippines and Australia — in the seven-day competition.
Unable to make it in this year’s men’s competition are Kazakhstan, South Korea and Jordan, who declined the invitation to take part in the event because of short notice from the hosts and a lack of funding. However, Kazakhstan and South Korea will take part in the women’s competition.
Seeking to improve upon its fourth-place finish of a year ago will be a Taiwanese national squad led by skipper Chang Hsueh-lei of the Yulon Luxgens, whose crew of Super Basketball League (SBL) standouts include the Luxgens’ Lee Hsueh-lin and Lu Cheng-rue, Taiwan Beer’s Yang Jing-min and Chen Si-nian, the Dacin Tigers’ Lin Yi-hui and Chen Tzu-wei and Kinmen Liquor’s Cheng Ren-wei among a potent lineup that is 15 players deep.
Top names of the SBL such as Lin “the Beast” Chih-jeh, three-time MVP winner Tien Lei (Dacin Tigers) and the Luxgens’ Tseng Wen-ding will not be available for this year’s competition because of injuries.
As for the College All-Stars, Fu Ren Catholic University’s Liu Jung-yeh will lead a group of promising youngsters as they look to gain valuable experience in international competition to better their overall skills.
Iran and Lebanon are unquestionably the teams to beat in this year’s play, with the former ready to defend their title and the latter looking to give Iran a serious challenge following last year’s third-place finish.
Because of scheduling constraints, there will not be a medal round after the usual round-robin preliminaries, because the final standings will be based strictly on the result of the preliminaries, with a set of tie-breaking rules in case some teams finish with identical records.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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