Pure Youth Construction bounced back from their first loss of the season on Saturday night with a 68-58 win over previously unbeaten Taiwan Beer at the National Taiwan University of Sports Gymnasium in Greater Taichung last night, to salvage a 1-1 split in their two games over the weekend.
Tsai Wen-cheng came off the bench with 10 points and 16 rebounds to lead the Builders in a game he did not start due to a minor knee injury.
However, with his club at risk of dropping two straight, not even the injury could hold a hustling and bustling Tsai, who snagged a game-high 16 boards to help his team win.
Photo: Lin Tsung-wei, Taipei Times
“It’s a sign of a great team to be able to come back from an off game like we did,” Pure Youth head coach Hsu Chin-che said after the game.
His troops still managed to find a way to win against a top-caliber team that featured two of the top scorers in the league in Liu Chan (19 points) and Patrick O’Bryant (17 points).
“[Pure Youth Constructions] really know how to hurt you where you are most vulnerable; we thought as long as we kept them under 70 points, we’d win, but that was not the case tonight,” Taiwan Beer assistant coach Chou Chun-san said of the Builders after the game.
In a game in which their perimeter shooting suffered, the Builders made up for it by out-rebounding the Brew Crew 53-32.
TIGERS 82, KINMEN LIQUOR 87 (OT)
Rallying from as many as 10 points down in the fourth quarter, Kinmen Liquor used a 14-4 run in the final five minutes of regulation time to force the game into overtime, going on to defeat the Dacin Tigers 87-82 in Taichung yesterday afternoon.
The battle between the league’s two winless clubs was all Tigers in the early going, with Chou Yi-hsiang and Norvel Pelle combining for 15 of the Cats’ 24 first-quarter points to lead the Distillers 24-17 after one quarter of play.
Kinmen Liquor regained their composure to keep the deficit under 10 over the next two quarters of play, before letting down their guards to allow Dacin to take a double-digit margin midway through the fourth.
That was when Chen Shih-huan decided to crank his game up a notch, with the Kinmen forward nailing a pair of clutch threes in the final five minutes of regulation to send the contest into overtime for the gutsy win.
Leading all scorers with 31 points and 20 rebounds on the night was Kinmen Liquor center Bryan Davis.
Davis won the battle between the big men against the Tigers’ Pelle, who had a 20-20 outing of his own in his return from an apparent injury that sidelined him in Saturday’s game.
LUXGENS 66, BRAVES 58
The Yulon Luxgens kept their unbeaten record intact at 4-0 with a 66-58 win over the Fubon Braves in Taichung last night, thanks to an outstanding effort by Chou Po-chen, who contributed a team-high 17 to clinch the victory for the league’s leading side.
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