Defending champions the Kaohsiung Aquas followed up their 120-90 win over the Taichung Suns on Saturday with a 130-109 victory on Sunday against the Taoyuan Leopards to move to the top of the T1 League.
The Aquas, winner of the T1 League’s inaugural 2021-2022 season, now lead the six-team standings with a 5-2 record after their two wins at the Kaohsiung Arena.
On Sunday, the Aquas powered ahead with a 40-25 lead at the end of the first quarter, with the Leopards trailing 66-49 by the end of the first half.
Photo: Mandy Nien, Taipei Times
With a comfortable cushion already established, the Aquas remained in control for the rest of the game.
Aquas shooting guard Chiu Tzu-hsuan led his team with 31 points, shooting 11-16 from the floor, including 4-7 from beyond the arc and 5-5 from the stripe.
Aquas point guard Jason Brickman contributed a double-double of 20 points and 13 assists, while teammate Mindaugas Kupsas, who plays center, posted 22 points and 19 rebounds.
Although the Aquas won, Leopards small forward Troy Williams led all scorers with 37 points.
“We don’t really think about ladder positions, we don’t think about that at all. We think about just playing who we got to play, and this weekend was about an opportunity to get two at home,” Aquas head coach Brendan Joyce said at a post-game news conference.
In the T1 League’s other Sunday matchup, the Taipei-based Taiwan Beer Herobears outhustled the visiting Tainan TSG GhostHawks 112-108 at the University of Taipei’s Tianmu campus gym.
Herobears forward Cleanthony Early ran riot over the GhostHawks’ defense, scoring 56 points, five rebounds and seven dimes, while GhostHawks center Samuel Deguara answered with 28 points, 16 rebounds and four assists.
In the P.League+, the Kaohsiung Steelers snapped a six-game losing streak with a 115-95 win over visiting New Taipei Kings at the Kaohsiung Fengshan Stadium.
Steelers forward Terrence Jones led all scorers with 33 points, while Kings center Byron Mullens led his team with 26 points.
The Kings are at the top of the six-team P. League+ standings with a 5-2 record, while the 1-6 Steelers are at the bottom.
In the weekend’s other P.League+ matchup, the Taoyuan Pilots defeated the Hsinchu JKO Lioneers 94-80 on the road at the Hsinchu County Stadium.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier