Showing off a tremendous bench depth of five men, Pure Youth Construction wore down the Dacin Tigers in an 81-71 decision in Game 4 of the Super Basketball League Championship Finals at the Sinjhuang Sports Complex in New Taipei City last night to clinch the holy grail of Taiwanese professional basketball.
Chien Jia-hong and Tsai Wen-cheng came off the Builders’ bench with 16 and 11 points respectively to account for nearly a third of their team’s total offense, helping skipper Hsu Jin-tseh and his troops to land their first-ever league title.
“It’s been a while since I’ve contributed as much as tonight and that’s just awesome,” a much -relieved Chien said after the game.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
His timely surge was a main factor in the win because it occupied the Tiger defense enough to free up the inside of the paint for big man Quincy Davis, who racked up 16 points and more importantly 18 rebounds, including eight off the offensive glass, to dominate the Tigers the entire game.
“It was a tough series for us all around, even though we swept the series because [the Tigers] really put up a good fight,” Hsu said after the game, in tears.
The three-time Coach of the Year winner finally won the coveted championship trophy after making it into the post-season and being eliminated in the first round four straight times.
With their backs against the wall, the Tigers came out firing with 21 points in the first quarter, forcing eight turnovers on the part of the Builders to take a 21-15 lead.
However, that lead quickly evaporated against a regrouped Builder crew who answered with a 24-15 run in the second quarter to close out the first half with a 39-36 advantage.
A pair of baskets by Dacin’s Tien Lei gave the Tigers a lead early in the third quarter, before Lin Jin-bang rolled off a half-dozen points in the third to give his team an eight-point cushion heading into the final quarter.
That was the confidence-booster that turned the corner for the Builders as they upped their lead to as many as 11 in the fourth, despite an all-out rally by the Tigers that brought them to within five of Pure Youth with a minute remaining in the game.
Championship Final MVP
A very deserving Chen Shih-jeh was named the MVP for the Championship Final as the speedy guard averaged 15.5 points per game in the Builders’ four wins.
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
Rafael Nadal on Tuesday lost in straight sets to 31st-ranked Jiri Lehecka in the fourth round at the Madrid Open, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the semi-finals in the women’s doubles. Nadal said that he was feeling good about his progress following his latest injury layoff. Nadal called it a “positive week” in every way and said his body held up well. “I was able to play four matches, a couple of tough matches,” Nadal said. “So very positive, winning three matches, playing four matches at the high level of tennis. I enjoyed a lot playing at home. I leave here with