Chang Bo-sheng scored a team-high 19 points and Liam McMorrow followed with 18 more as Bank of Taiwan went on to defeat Kinmen Liquor 77-69 at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology Gymnasium in Taichung yesterday afternoon to open the new SBL season on a high note.
The shooting guard out of Taipei’s Tsai Hsing Senior High, who has worked his way from the Bankers’ bench to skipper Wei Chen-ming’s starting five, shot a solid nine-for-10 from the free-throw line, including eight-of-eight in the decisive fourth quarter, to carry his team past the favored Distillers.
As for the Canadian-born McMorrow, who was released by the Dacin Tigers earlier, his newfound Bankers’ club appeared to be a better fit as he racked up 18 points and 11 rebounds in a double-double outing to impress Wei.
“[McMorrow] had a very solid game considering the fact that he has only been with us for a few days,” Wei said after the game.
McMorrow will likely remain with the Bankers in the near future before Wei decides to keep the hired gun or seek new help.
The Bankers took an 18-15 lead after the first quarter behind seven points by Chang and doubled the cushion to six at the end of the first half by outscoring the Distillers 14-11in the second quarter.
Even though Kinmen Liquor managed to pour in 22 points in the third to reduce the deficit to three points, the outcome of the contest was never in doubt, as the Bankers converted 12 of 14 from the free-throw line with the game on the line to keep the victory intact.
TAIWAN BEER 70, LUXGENS 62
Holding the Yulon Luxgens to eight points in the fourth quarter, Taiwan Beer also won their season opener in Taichung early last night to kick off the new season with a bang.
Still in search of a foreign player, the Brew Crew decided to go with an all-local lineup against a Yulon squad that featured former NBA player Solomon Alabi of Nigeria. The local boys did not disappoint skipper Liu Chia-hua as they held Alabi to just four points in the second half, after allowing the Nigerian big man to score 11 points in the first half to deny the car makers their first win of the season.
Tso Tsong-kai led a Brew Crew trio in double-digit scoring with 16 to his credit, while Chou Shi-yuan’s game-high 17 topped the Luxgens’ own trio of double-digit scorers.
LEOPARDS 77, TIGERS 61
The Taiwan Mobile Cloud Leopards roughed up the Dacin Tigers in a 77-61 triumph in Taichung that dealt the Tigers their first loss of the season.
Twenty-eight fourth-quarter points by the Leopards blew an otherwise one-point game wide open as the Leopards outscored the Tigers 28-13 in the fourth to pull away in the end.
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