Last week’s SBL Player of the Week award went to Chen Ching-huan of Kinmen Liquor, who beat out fellow center Aaron Pettway of the US to take home the coveted award.
The soft-spoken Kinmen native, whose second tour of duty with the Distiller is a charm following a two-year stint with the Taiwan Mobile Cloud Leopards, won the distinction as his team’s go-to guy with a wealth of experience and an exceptional instinct for the ball.
“I’d like to thank my teammates and coaches for believing in me and getting the ball to me,” a pleased Chen said after learning of his selection. His determination to improve over the years has finally earned him a chance to shine on the big stage with the best of Kinmen, not to mention the 22-points-per-game average that he amassed in the two games that the Distillers won last week.
Photo: Courtesy of the SBL
“[Chen’s] tremendous work ethic has earned him a chance to star in the league after having spent several years in a supporting role with the four different teams he has played for,” Kinmen Liquor rookie skipper Yang Chih-hao said of his star player earlier this week.
Yang and his troops will have their hands full in a pair of uphill battles at the Miaoli County Arena this weekend, starting with tonight’s showdown against the top-ranked Pure Youth Constructions, winners of six-straight games and counting, followed by tomorrow’s match against four-time champs the Yulon Luxgens.
PLAYER OF THE MONTH
The result for last month’s Player of the Month voting was announced by the league on Wednesday and Pure Youth Construction center Quincy Davis easily topped Taiwan Beer great Liu Chan to land the award.
The recently naturalized Taiwanese citizen, whose outstanding play on the national squad helped Taiwan to a top-four finish in the FIBA Asia Championship for the first time in 14 years, has proved his worth to the Builders in an ever-competitive league that lifted its restrictions on imported players’ heights and salaries this season. His continuing success against the younger and bigger foreign players only proves that size and athletic ability are not the only elements to success in basketball.
“The role of the foreign players should not be to win every game, but to help develop local players on the team so that everyone’s level of play can improve,” a modest Davis said upon learning of his win on Wednesday.
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