Third-day action in this year’s Hualien Probation Cup basketball tournament yesterday afternoon saw the Bank of Taiwan knock off the Dacin Tigers in a 74-64 shocker at the Hualien County Sports Complex.
Fresh off a big win over Liaoning Pan Pan of the Chinese Basketball Association the night before, the stage seemed set for the Tigers to rumble their way through the preliminaries with an expected win over a weaker Bank squad.
Instead, the Bank made the Tigers pay with an outstanding second half, led by Hsu Chih-chiang and Chen Jung-jeh’s 23 combined points, to turn a narrow halftime deficit into a solid 10-point victory.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF HPB
“I guess getting the team together more than a month earlier than our usual schedule has finally paid off,” Bank of Taiwan skipper Lai Liang-chung said after the game.
He was extremely proud of his troops, even though the win did not help their cause as far as -advancement into the -semi--finals because all three teams from Group A (Bank of Taiwan, Dacin Tigers and Liaoning Pan Pan) ended with identical 1-1 records and, according to the tournament’s tiebreaking rules, the fact they had the widest margin of defeat on the opening day meant they would not advance.
The Tigers fell behind 16-21 after one quarter of play and needed a big second quarter to claim a -33--32 lead at the half.
The two teams traded the lead five times in a hard fought third, before the Bankers pulled off a 14-4 run that upped their lead to as much as 13 in the third.
Dacin managed to pull within four with newcomer Vincent James and Wang Chih-chuin making a run late in the game, but it was too little, too late as they fell short by 10 in the end.
TAIWAN BEER 78, SICHUAN 54
Taiwan Beer made it two in a row with a convincing 78-54 win over China’s Sichuan Jin Qiang in the second game yesterday afternoon, to close out the two-game preliminaries with a perfect 2-0 record.
Newcomer Emmanuel Jones of the US made his presence felt by dominating inside the paint, with most of his game-high 16 points coming from close range to lead his new team.
Also starring for the Brew Crew was newly acquired forward Cheng Ren-wei (from Kinmen Liquor), who netted 14 to go along with Jones’ 16 to account for nearly 40 percent of their team’s total offense.
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