Chen "Airman" Hsin-an's game-high 21 points along with Tseng Wen-ding's 15 propelled the Yulon Dinos to an 83-69 win over the Dmedia Numen at the National Taiwan College of Physical Education in Taichung on Sunday evening.
The weekend finale in last week's Super Basketball League play saw the three-time champs take advantage of a 12-0 run in the closing minutes of an otherwise evenly fought battle to pull away with the win.
Backcourt tandem Chen Chih-chung and Lee Hsueh-lin also netted 28 combined points, mostly from the perimeter, to force the Numen out of their zone defense that was designed to guard against the sound low-post play of the Dinos' Airman and Tseng.
"Good outside shooting is the key to beating the zone defense," Chen Chih-chung said after the game. His team has won both of its games during the opening weekend to remain undefeated at 2-0.
The Numen played the Dinos hard from the get-go with newly acquired foreign help Jonathan Sanders (of the Taiwan Mobile Leopards) leading the way as the first quarter came to a quick finish with the score tied at 16-all.
The seesaw affair continued well into the second quarter as the Dinos slightly outdid the Numen to close out the first half with a narrow 37-36 lead.
A 10-0 run by the Dinos midway through the third quarter gave them a sizable cushion at 58-47. But the Numen would answer with four straight three-pointers to keep it a two-point game all the way to the final three minutes, when they were shut down.
Having played for nearly three hours in a double-overtime win over Pure Youth the night before might have taken its toll as Dmedia appeared to have run out of gas in the end.
Leopards 56, Pure Youth 47
Playing their third game in as many days, the Taiwan Mobile Leopards overcame a sluggish nine-point first quarter by playing well enough against an often-disorganized Pure Youth squad to clinch the 56-47 win.
The 47 points by the Builders (Pure Youth Construction), as well as the 103 combined point total in the game were both new league marks, as neither club was able to sustain a steady flow on offense during the entire game.
Newly acquired forwards Hsu Wei-sheng and Liu Cheng-yao's (from the Dinos) 25 combined points represented nearly half of the Leopards' offensive output, making the offseason transactions on behalf of the front office looking rather wise thus far.
The game started with Pure Youth coming out firing behind the strong play of forward James Mao and Jien Jia-hong with seven points apiece to help build a 16-9 lead at the end of the first quarter.
That the last time the Builders had their heads in the game, as they were held to single-digit scoring in the second and fourth quarter, with only seven and nine points respectively.
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