Failure to hold on to a hard-earned lead in the fourth quarter cost Team Taiwan the game against Kazakhstan yesterday afternoon in the consolation round of Jones Cup play as the hosts lost 66-56 at the Taipei County Sinjhuang Gymnasium.
Kazakhstan led the game by a deuce at the half and decided to exploit Taiwan’s weaker interior defense early in the third, opening up leads as large as nine points, only to find Taiwan countering with a 14-6 run of its own to close out the third quarter with a surprising one-point lead.
Taiwan increased its lead by as many as five points in the fourth quarter before an all-too-familiar collapse in the final minutes fed right into a gruesome 17-2 Kazakhstan run, leaving Taiwan 10 points behind in the end.
Inappropriate substitution on the part of skipper Chung Kwang-Suk might have played a part in Taiwan’s late-game collapse.
Chung might have left a few of his fast-fatiguing players in the game too long, opening up several easy scoring opportunities for Kazakhstan in the deciding moments of the game.
USA 102, TAIWAN 86
On Wednesday, outplayed by a superior US squad in every facet of the game, Team Taiwan dropped its sixth straight game in the competition by a 102-86 margin to close out the preliminary round with a disappointing 1-6 mark.
Even though the outcome of the contest did not go the way Taiwan had hoped, the home team did give the Americans a run for their money by hanging tough during the first half to keep the deficit to a single digit (52-44) before the foreigners pulled away in the second half to wrap up the win.
Leading the attack for Taiwan with 15 second-quarter points on a game-high, 29-point night was power forward Yang Jing-min (Taiwan Beer), who showed incredible range by taking the ball strong to the hoop on several occasions while nailing jumpers from the perimeters to keep the US team’s defense honest.
Also starring for Taiwan with a dozen hard-earned points were speedy guard Lee Hsueh-lin (Yulon Dinos) and forward Lin Jin-bang (Bank of Taiwan), who muscled his way down below for 11 tough points and four assists.
As for the USA, represented by evangelical group Athletes in Action, which finished out the preliminaries with a 6-1 record to qualify for the No. 1 seed in the semi-finals, Laval Lucas-Perry led the way with 22 points, followed by Brett Winkelman’s 21.
YESTERDAY’S OTHER GAMES
In yesterday’s other matches, Jordan continued their fine run with a 73-60 victory over the Australians, while the USA completed their march to the finals with a hard-fought 97-90 win over Qatar. It was the Qataris’ highest-scoring game, but not enough to stop the marauding US side.
TODAY’S GAMES
The USA will play Jordan in tonight’s intriguing final, with Australia facing Qatar in the playoff for third place.
Taiwan is scheduled to take on South Korea in the battle for seventh place at 1pm in the consolation round, after South Korea fell to a tough Egyptian team in the other game of the consolation round earlier yesterday.
Revenge will undoubtedly be on South Korea’s mind since it dropped the opener to Taiwan last Thursday and had to settle for an eighth-place finish in the preliminaries, despite finishing the seven-game stretch with a 1-6 record, identical to that of Taiwan.
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