Playing near-flawless ball in the second half, Bank of Taiwan overcame a six-point deficit in the third quarter and rallied from behind to defeat the top-ranked Dacin Tigers 67-59 at the Sinjhuang Sports Complex in New Taipei City last night.
The win not only avenged a three-point loss in overtime to these same Tigers in their previous meeting, but also put the financial wizards in a great position to climb out of the cellar as they picked up win No. 3 to tie two other teams (Taiwan Beer and Kinmen Liquor) in total wins heading into this afternoon’s contests.
John Vaudreuil played his best game in nearly two years by grabbing a career-high 24 rebounds on a 12-point night for the Bankers while Hsu Chih-chiang and Chen Hsuen-hsiang accounted for 28 more to outplay the Cats in the biggest upset of the season so far.
The frontcourt trio for the Bankers more than shut down a potent Dacin offense by holding the league-leaders to a season-low 59 points, nearly 20 points short of their season average of 77.8 points per game heading into last night’s game.
Also starring for the Bankers was swingman Chung Hsiao-wen, whose reverse layup and acrobatic drive to the hoop in the third kept the Bankers in the game long enough to set the stage for their fourth-quarter run.
Bank of Taiwan also took much better care of the ball in the game-deciding second half, committing just four turnovers, compared with their usual ten-or-more per half.
“I knew if we’d take better care of the ball, we’d have a chance [at winning the game],” Bank of Taiwan skipper Lai Liang-chung said after the game.
His crew made good on his prediction by keeping their turnover total to a season-low 13 for the game as they won two of the past three convincingly against worthy opponents to give their fans something to talk about.
PURE YOUTH 97, KINMEN LIQUOR 74
Pure Youth Construction easily handled Kinmen Liquor in a 97-74 final in the second game in Sinjhuang last night.
It was the Builders’ seventh straight win, setting a new club record for longest win streak as they improved to 9-3 for the season.
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
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