Chou Shih-yuan shot better than 60 percent from the field on a 27-point night, Chen Chih-chung followed with a game-high five assists, and the Yulon Luxgens rallied in the fourth quarter to top Taiwan Beer 71-66 at the Sinjhuang Sport Complex in New Taipei City last night.
It was Chou’s best game of the season by far, as the shooting guard out of Taipei Physical Education College picked up the scoring slack left by the injured Emmanuel Jones to lift his team past the Brew Crew in dramatic fashion.
Taiwan Beer took advantage of Jones’ absence by pounding the ball inside the paint, with Byron Allen racking up six quick points to give the Brew Crew a 19-14 lead after the first quarter.
Yulon revamped their interior defense to guard against Allen while upping their offense a notch — with Chou netting nine — to outscore Taiwan Beer 20-13 in a much-improved second-quarter performance and earn a 34-32 halftime advantage.
Taiwan Beer managed to reclaim the lead in the third quarter, with Allen taking it strong to the hoop on several occasions, before the Luxgens finally buckled down by holding their opponents to only 10 points in the final quarter to rally from behind and prevail in the end.
PURE YOUTH 86, KINMEN LIQUOR 74
Top-ranked Pure Youth Construction were a dozen points better than Kinmen Liquor with a win in Sinjhuang yesterday afternoon to improve to 9-2 for the year.
The Builders showed off their tremendous team speed and bench depth by pushing the ball up the court as much as possible.
They had more than a dozen fastbreak buckets as they wore down the Distillers to put the game away long before the final buzzer.
Foul trouble for Kinmen Liquor top scorer Taylor King, who spent nearly the entire second half on the bench, also made the Builders’ job a lot easier.
The former Duke University standout fouled out of the game early in the third to finish with only four points on the day, well short of his 30-plus average over the past four games.
LEOPARDS 72, TIGERS 69
The Taiwan Mobile Cloud Leopards also rallied from behind to defeat the Dacin Tigers in the final match in Sinjhuang last night.
Trailing by four with less than a minute remaining, the Leopards scored the final seven points of the contest to deny the Tigers.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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