The Dacin Tigers pulled off another upset win over No. 1 side Pure Youth Construction by topping the two-time defending champs in a 75-68 final at the Sinjhuang Sports Complex in New Taipei City last night to even their weekend mark at 1-1.
Despite their below-.500 season of 10-14, the Tigers managed to win the regular season series against the top squad in the league by a 3-2 margin thanks to a solid outing by hired gun Reggie Okosa who netted a game-high 16 points and 15 rebounds to carry his club past the Builders.
It was an important win for the Cats for keeping their postseason hopes alive, especially following their defeat against Taiwan Beer the night before, which dropped them to No. 6 in the standings. They are looking to fight for the fourth-and-final playoff berth with the Yulon Luxgens and Kinmen Liquor in a tight race.
Chu Yi-tsong came off the bench with five points in the opening frame to help give the Cats a surprising 20-17 advantage after one quarter of play, before the Builders answered with a strong second quarter to make it a one-point game, 33-32 in favor of the Tigers, at the half.
Four three-pointers by the Tigers in a 22-point third, including a pair by Luo Yu-chun, upped their half-time lead by four as they continued to score to keep Pure Youth at bay.
The Builders tied the game up at 55-all early in the fourth with a 5-0 run, before the Cats decided to take their game up a notch in the final seven minutes of play to attain a lead that they would not relinquish.
Dacin will have a chance to close out the tough three-game weekend on a high note with a match against the Distillers this evening. A victory will likely net them fifth place in the standings at the expense of the Distillers.
BANK OF TAIWAN 67, TAIWAN BEER 70
Taiwan Beer used a solid third quarter to erase a half-time deficit and held on in the fourth to defeat Bank of Taiwan in Sinjhuang yesterday afternoon.
Sloppy ball-handling coupled with a stone-cold 3-for-13 shooting from the field set the Brew Crew back by eight at the half as the Bankers capitalized on Taiwan Beer’s miscues in a dominant second quarter.
That was the extent the last-place Bankers were able to hang with the men in green as they fell victims to an intensified Taiwan Beer defense.
LEOPARDS 75, KINMEN LIQUOR 74
Chen Shih-nian’s running drive to the hoop with 1.7 seconds remaining resulted in the game-winner as the Taiwan Mobile Cloud Leopards rallied from a dozen down in the fourth to edge past Kinmen Liquor 75-74 last night.
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