Behind the stellar performance of Quincy Davis III, Pure Youth Construction easily cruised past Bank of Taiwan in an 85-65 victory at the Kaohsiung Arena yesterday afternoon to close out a demanding three-game weekend with a perfect 3-0 record.
The center from the US, who had played away from home professionally in Europe, South America and China prior to joining the Builders this season, scored 23 points and snatched up a dozen rebounds to lead his team in both offensive categories. His timely surge more than made up for an off day from Chen “Airman” Hsin-an, who managed to convert two of the four three-pointers he attempted in a six-point effort after averaging nearly 19 points per game in his previous three games.
Pure Youth took a 16-11 lead after opening the game with a 12-2 run and they steadily added to their advantage over the next three quarters by outplaying the Bankers in every facet of the game.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
The win was not only their fourth straight, but it also helped improve their record to a solid 6-3 before the Lunar New Year break, a great accomplishment considering they opened the season with two losses.
The Bankers failure to shut down the Builders attack was to blame as they dropped to their third straight defeat to head into the break with a 1-7 record.
“We really weren’t at our best at all today,” Bankers head coach Lai Liang-chung said after the game.
KINMEN LIQUOR 62, TAIWAN BEER 61
Kinmen Liquor made it two narrow victories in a row against Taiwan Beer to edge the defending champions in a thriller yesterday afternoon to improve their record to 3-5 for the season.
Hired gun Tim Parham rewarded rookie skipper Hsu Chih-chao’s confidence in him after Hsu started the American center in his second straight game since his arrival in Taiwan on Friday with a game-high 20-point outing, good enough to humble a Brew Crew who were able to rally from a 14-point deficit in the second half to take a four-point lead, before faltering in the final minutes to lose the game by a single point.
Trailing by one with under a minute remaining in the game, Taiwan Beer had a chance to go ahead with two free-throw attempts for Cheng Ren-wei, but the forward, who misfired from two feet and cost his team the game on Saturday, again missed both attempts. Fellow teammates Ho Sho-cheng and Emmanuel Jones also missed a wide-open three-pointer and the subsequent put-back attempt respectively with time running out, denying their team what would have been a brilliant comeback.
LUXGENS 83, LEOPARDS 70
The Yulon Luxgens shook off a diehard Taiwan Mobile who hung tough with the four-time champions for three quarters with a superior fourth quarter to defeat the Leopards by 13 in the weekend finale.
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