Yang Jing-min and Emmanuel Jones scored more than 20 points for the second straight game as they bagged 22 and 21 points respectively to help Taiwan Beer rout the Yulon Luxgens 93-78 at the Taipei Gymnasium last night.
It was the Brew Crew’s team-best seventh straight victory, upping their league-leading record to an awesome 12-1 close to the midway point of the 30-game season.
Yulon put up a good fight in the first half against the top club in the league with red-hot shooting from forward Lu Cheng-rue, who nailed three three-pointer’s in a 14-point effort to muster a 40-40 tie at halftime.
However, things would take a nasty dive south for the defending champions in the second half when Taiwan Beer doubled up on them with a swirling 28-14 run in the third. They padded the lead to as much as 24 points, before running away with the 15-point win.
“I guess their game against Kinmen Kaoliang [the previous night] really took a lot out of them physically, that’s why the second half turned out the way it did,” Taiwan Beer skipper Yen Jia-hua said after the game, referring to Yulon’s emotional win over Kinmen Kaoliang on Saturday.
His troops will take a much deserved break over the next two days before Wednesday’s contest against Bank of Taiwan in what should be a relatively easy win.
The absence of All-Star center Tseng Wen-ding (gone for the season with intent to play in China) took its toll as the Luxgens interior defense proved no match to a superior Taiwan Beer inside attack.
TIGERS 76, BANK OF TAIWAN 64
Bank of Taiwan missed their chance to win three in a row by falling a dozen short against the Dacin Tigers earlier yesterday to close out the weekend on a down note.
Newly acquired Alexus Foyle showed great improvement on offense in a Dacin uniform by netting 19 points and 10 boards on a double-double outing, while he held the Bankers’ inside threat, John Vaudreuil, to six points in the first half as the Bankers led the Cats.
Even though Vaudreuil would end up with 17 points on the night in a solid showing statistically, the damage had already been done as his team fell behind by as many as 15 in the first quarter to set the tone for the rest of the game.
LEOPARDS 84, PURE YOUTH 78
The Taiwan Mobile Leopards out-muscled Pure Youth Construction last night to pull off the upset of the weekend.
The Builders sorely missed the services of their top gun Rashad Jones-Jennings (and his double-20 average), who was out serving a one-game suspension for taking a swing at Taiwan Beer’s Wu Dai-hao after Wu had engaged him with a swing and some trash talk in their game on Saturday.
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