Falling short by a ton for the third straight game, Taiwan lost to Japan in an 81-72 decision to settle for an eighth-place finish in this year’s FIBA Asia Championship at the Wuhan Sports Complex in Wuhan, China, yesterday afternoon.
It was the worst finish for the Islanders in recent years, compared with a fifht-place finish in 2009 and a sixth-place finish in 2007.
“Things did not work out the way we had planned them,” skipper Chou Jung-san said after the game.
His troops dug themselves a 20-point hole in the opening frame and played catch-up the entire way before losing by nine in the end.
Injuries also took their toll for Taiwan in this year’s competition, as six of the original dozen suffered injuries that were serious enough to sideline them by the end of the game against Japan.
“Of course [injuries] played a part in this game, but that’s not an excuse for us to lose the game though,” Chou added.
He lost point guard Lee Hsueh-lin and James Mao in the quarter-finals against the Philippines on Friday and forward Chien Chia-hung and guard Su Yi-chieh in Saturday’s match versus Iran, before forwards Wu Tai-hao and Chen Hsin-an went down during yesterday’s game.
Japan came out firing in the opening frame, converting five of seven three-pointers to grab a staggering 25-5 lead after the first eight minutes of play.
That proved more than Taiwan could handle, despite an all-out rally to pull them within six of Japan mid-way through the fourth quarter, before losing by nine in the end.
Three players scored in double-digits for Taiwan, led by Lin’s game-high 18, while Japan’s Kosuke Takeuchi netted 16 to lead a foursome of double-digit scorers for Japan, who closed out the competition with a 7th-place finish.
In the title game between China and Jordan, the home hosts showed no mercy on their own turf by edging past Jordan in a 70-69 final to win their 15th title in 18 chances.
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