The Dacin Tigers promptly evened the series at one win apiece with a convincing 79-65 win over the Yulon Luxgens in Game 2 of the Championship Finals at the Taipei County Gymnasium in Sinjhuang last night.
After Friday night’s narrow loss to the Luxgens in which the defending champs had rallied from 27 down in the second half to pull within a point before losing by four, the Cats showed their tremendous desire to repeat with top scorer Tien Lei netting a game-high 31 points to lift his team past the three-time champs.
In a game they never trailed, the Tigers greeted the Luxgens with a 7-0 run during the first three minutes of the contest before closing out the first quarter leading 21-11.
Both teams opened up their offense in the second quarter with the Tigers downing 22, while the Luxgens found their shooting touch from long range for 19 points in the quarter to trail the Tigers by 13 at the half (43-30).
Yulon made it run in the third with three-pointers from Yang Tseh-yi, Lee Hsueh-lin, and Chou Shih-yuan to reduce a once 15-point Dacin lead to just five, highlighted by Lee Hsueh-lin’s long three with under a minute to play in the quarter.
But that wasn’t enough as the Tigers resorted to center Byron Allen’s strong inside play against a foul-plagued Tseng Wen-ding that led to a slew of uncontested layups by Allen to keep the scoring margin steadily at double-digit the rest of the game.
Overreliance on the three’s that led to only nine field goals from inside the three-point line hurt the Luxgens as Tseng was totally neutralized by the three first-half fouls and a great Dacin interior defense.
Even though the Luxgens would sink 13 three’s for the game, they were dominated by the Tigers off the glass as well as on the turnovers, leaving a hole too big to plug in a losing effort.
As for the Tigers, other than Tien’s season-high 31 points, Allen also chipped in 19 followed by point guard Su Shiang-yi’s 14 to account for 81 percent of their team’s total point production.
“It’s a big win for us in terms of getting our confidence back, especially after the tough loss in Game 1,” Su said after the game.
His seven rebounds and eight assists in the game also caused a lot of problems for the Luxgens’ defense.
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