Outplaying the Dacin Tigers in the second half, Pure Youth Construction broke an otherwise close game wide open late in the third quarter and held off a late rally by the Tigers to win their second straight title by taking Game 6 of the championship finals 77-63 at the Sinjhuang Sports Complex in New Taipei City last night.
An 8-0 run over the final two minutes of the third turned a narrow 43-42 lead into a comfortable 51-42 margin that the Builders increased to 13 early in the fourth, before star center Quincy Davis fouled out of the game with more than eight-and-a-half minutes remaining.
The Tigers exploited the weakened Builders defense by pounding the ball inside the paint, with Orlando Howell and Tien Lei scoring at will from close range to bring their team to within six points.
Tsai Wen-cheng then took matters into his own hands by coming up big with several defensive rebounds over the final four minutes and converting three of four free -throw attempts down the stretch to secure the victory.
He was named the unanimous series MVP for his game-high 18 rebounds to go with his nine points on the night. Tsai’s outstanding contribution proved that the Builders could win in the absence of the foreign help (Davis) at a critical juncture in the game.
“All the credit should go to our local players as they really did a great job in Davis’ absence to keep [the Tigers] from coming back against us,” Pure Youth skipper Hsu Jin-tseh said after the game.
His players really rose to the occasion, despite allowing the Tigers to grab 40 rebounds (18 off the offensive glass) on the night.
Three first-half fouls on Howell set the Tigers back for a good part of the first half as they looked exclusively to top scorer Tien Lei for the bulk of their points.
Even though Tien and Howell combined for 34 of their team’s 63 points, it was too little, too late to help them pull off the upset win as the Builders were simply too strong to cough up the lead.
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