Tien Lei scored 15 points in the first quarter on a 27-point outing, while Alexus Foyle chipped in another 17, to help the Dacin Tigers cruise past the Taiwan Mobile Leopards in an 84-70 final at the Taipei Gymnasium last night.
The victory not only pushed the Cats’ record to a season-best 7-5 near the midway point of the season, but more importantly gave them a firmer grasp of the third spot in the standings.
In a match that featured a pair of standouts playing against their former teams, Su Hsiang-yi of the Leopards and Foyle of the Tigers, it was Foyle who clearly had the upper hand, as the St Vincent native netted 17 compared with Su’s four to get the job done for his new team.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
Picking up the scoring slack for the Leopards was guard Wu Yong-ren, whose team-high 19 kept his team in the game for over three quarters before the Tigers tightened their defense to shut down the Leopards’ penetration, helping them come away with the big win.
Dacin came out firing with 31 points in the first quarter for a surprising 31-18 lead through the first 10 minutes of play. However, the Leopards responded with a 13-3 run in the latter part of the second quarter to close out the first half down by just six.
Dacin managed to extend their lead to double-digits (13) in the third, with Foyle and Lin Yi-hui leading the way to give Tien a much-needed breather.
That was enough for Tien to recharge his batteries as he downed eight of his team’s 17 points in the fourth to seal the victory.
Taiwan Mobile rallied from as many as 13 down without the services of imported player Marcus Dove, who was out with the flu, to pull within six of the Tigers early in the fourth, but simply could not get over the six-point hump as they dropped their tenth of the season to settle with a 3-10 record.
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