Nearly blowing leads as large as 27 points in the second half, the Yulon Luxgens held off a fierce Dacin Tigers rally in the fourth quarter to prevail 70-66 in Game 1 of the Super Basketball League Championship Finals at the Taipei County Gymnasium in Sinjhuang last night.
The highly anticipated showdown between the top two squads in the league was anything but close through the first three quarters, with the Luxgens outperforming the cats in every facet of the game to enjoy a surprising 55-36 lead.
However, with their backs to the wall, the defending champs kicked their game up a notch by hitting six threes on a 30-point scoring spree in the final quarter, led by Chen Tzu-wei’s trio of threes, to fall within a lone point of the Luxgens with under a minute to play.
That was as close as they got as the Lxugens’ Chen Chih-chung calmly sank a pair of free throws to up his team’s lead back to three and sealed it with another one in the closing seconds to keep it out of Dacin’s reach.
The all-important series-opener began with the Luxgens taking a surprising 8-2 lead in the first two minutes with Lee Hsueh-lin and Lee Chi-yi hitting from long range.
Even though the Tigers would come back, with Byron Allen scoring six of his team’s ten points in the first quarter, it did not keep the Luxgens from taking a 17-10 lead through the first.
Yulon then opened the second quarter with a 6-0 run to lead 23-10 before scoring the last nine points of the half to lead the game 42-20 at the half.
Chou Shih-yuan was simply unstoppable from the perimeter with a pair of threes on top of a mid-range jumper to spark what ended up being a 25-10 run for the Luxgens.
Yulon would lead by as many as 27 in the third with Lee Chi-yi and Lu Cheng-rue nailing jumpers from the field before the Tigers roared back with a 10-2 run in the final two minutes of the quarter to cut the deficit to 19 (55-36).
Five straight points by the Tigers’ Tien Lei to start the final quarter further reduced the Yulon advantage, forcing skipper Chang Hsueh-lei to regroup his team with a timeout.
That did not seem to affect the Tigers’ rally as they continued to score at will against a timid Yulon defense and chip away at the deficit.
Failure to maintain their level of intensity nearly cost the Luxgens the game as they tried too hard to protect the lead in the fourth quarter by deviating from their usual offensive scheme.
“We were too patient on offense in the fourth trying to protect our lead and forgetting to play our own game,” Yulon skipper Chang said after the game.
The two teams will meet in Sinjhuang at 7pm tonight for Game 2.
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