The red-hot Lamigo Monkeys continued their winning ways with a big 10-3 come-from-behind win over the resurging EDA Rhinos on Wednesday to extend their win streak to three straight.
The win showed several essential qualities that have made the Primates the team to beat in the league about one-third into the season as they demonstrated tremendous patience at the plate despite falling behind early, fully exploited the opposing team’s weakness when it counted the most and got the big outs when they needed them.
Both clubs entered into the contest with a full head of steam, with the Primates having won two straight and seven of their past eight and the Rhinos having won four in a row. However, with the game and the top spot in the standing on the line, it was Monkeys who rose to the occasion.
The battle between the top two squads in the league was a classic pitchers’ duel between a pair of foreign arms: Mitch Atkins of the US for the visiting Primates, and countryman Gaby Hernandez for the at-home Rhinos.
The Rhinos held a 2-1 lead after four innings of play.
However, after a 33-minute rain delay in the fourth that prompted the Rhinos to replace Hernandez, the Primates showed why they were the better team by pouring on eight unanswered runs over the next two frames to turn the game around, thanks to their tremendous patience at the plate against the Rhinos’ relief pitching that often went at least three pitches into every at-bat.
In addition to good patience at the plate that resulted in a solid three-to-four strikeout to walk ratio after the fourth inning, the Primates also hit the Rhinos where it hurt the most by getting base runners on against the struggling Rhinos mid-inning relief to string together a five-run fifth and a three-run sixth.
Lin “Chubby Kid” Hung-yu’s three-run blast off reliever Chien Yo-chia with two outs in the sixth was a case in point as the slugger out of the Chinese Culture University unloaded a pitch into the leftfield seats for the game-breaker.
Last, but not least for the Monkeys was the crafty pitching of Atkins, who allowed just three runs on eight hits by getting some clutch outs when it mattered the most to keep the damage to a minimum. The US righty allowed at least one runner on in all but one of the seven innings he pitched, but managed to strand a total of eight Rhinos runners, four of whom were in scoring position to give his team a chance for the win.
TIGHT GAME: The Detroit Pistons, the NBA’s second-best team, barely outlasted the Washington Wizards, who fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss Cade Cunningham’s triple double, Daniss Jenkins’ three-pointer at the buzzer and Javonte Green’s overtime dunk lifted Detroit past Washington 137-135 on Monday, stretching the Pistons’ win streak to seven games. In an unexpected thriller, the NBA’s second-best team barely outlasted a Wizards club that fell to an NBA-worst 1-10 with their ninth consecutive loss. “We knew how big this game was for us,” Jenkins said. “We wasn’t going to let nothing stop us from getting this W.” Cunningham made 14-of-45 shots and 16-of-18 free throws for a career-high 46 points, and added 12 rebounds, 11 assists, five steals and two
With a hat-trick on Wednesday, Victor Osimhen moved atop the UEFA Champions League scoring table, with the Nigeria striker netting all three goals in Galatasaray’s 3-0 victory over Ajax in Amsterdam. Osimhen moved to six goals this season in Europe’s elite club competition, one more than Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland. The Istanbul club signed Osimhen to a permanent deal from SSC Napoli in the summer for a record transfer fee in the Turkish League reportedly worth US$86 million. The 26-year-old striker needed less than 20 minutes to complete his first hat-trick in the competition. He headed in the opener in the
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
Amanda Anisimova on Wednesday pulled off a stellar comeback to get the better of Iga Swiatek 6-7 (3/7), 6-4, 6-2 and book her spot in the last four of the WTA Finals in Riyadh, while Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei won in the doubles at the women’s year-ending event. Making her tournament debut this week, the fourth-seeded Anisimova secured the runner-up spot in the Serena Williams Group behind Elena Rybakina. Rybakina completed round-robin play with a perfect 3-0 record, thanks to a 6-4, 6-4 success against Russian alternate Ekaterina Alexandrova earlier in the day. Anisimova improved her three-set record this season to an impressive
RSS