Nailing clutch threes when it mattered most, Chang Chih-fong grabbed the attention of the Basketball Writers’ Association to land the latest Player of the Week honor in the Super Basketball League.
The Dacin Tigers captain’s 13.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 2 assists-per-game average in the two games played last week might not seem particularly impressive compared with past winners of the award, but he was instrumental in helping the defending champs win both contests.
“There must be some kind of mistake; this [winning the award] can’t be right. So many other guys had better games than I did,” Chang said on learning of his selection for the weekly honor.
Chang and the rest of the Tigers pack will have a chance to extend their winning streak to seven with a trio of matches scheduled for this weekend. Tonight they face Pure Youth Construction, tomorrow sees a showdown with Taiwan Beer in a rematch of last year’s Championship Finals and Sunday’s weekend finale pits them against the Taiwan Mobile Leopards at the Hsinchu Municipal Gymnasium.
The striped Cats are slight favorites in the game against Pure Youth having won four in a row with a lineup that seems to be comfortable playing with each other even though they were blown out by Pure Youth in their last meeting.
The battle against the Beer Crew will likely be the toughest of the three games as the Beer’s attack of Wu Dai-hao and Delvin Thomas of the US will test the Tigers’ interior defense by matching up well against Byron Allen and Tien Lei.
The showdown with the Leopards should be an interesting contest for both teams as the spotted cats look to improve their team chemistry by working newcomer Antonio Grant into some of skipper Cheng Chih-long’s more complicated play designs, while the Tigers try to catch their breath in a physically demanding three-game sequence. The availability of Ouyang Jing-hen is also likely to play a key role as the Leopards forward has missed two weeks of play nursing a knee injury and is set to return to action to remove some of the scoring burden from Grant and guard Wu Yong-ren.
TONIGHT’S GAMES
Besides the Tigers-Pure Youth game scheduled for 6pm, Bank of Taiwan take on the Yulon Luxgens at 8pm in what should be a relatively easy win for the Luxgens as the Bankers remain winless at 0-6 and have not been in sync even with the arrival of US import Jeff Jones.
Yulon will finally get a chance to give all-star center Tseng Wen-ding a breather after averaging over 35 minutes per game and needing to give his banged up knees a rest.
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