Playing against a plucky Qatar squad who had five of their players disqualified due to eligibility issues, Taiwan made the necessary on-court adjustments to top Qatar 94-78 in the third game of Group B play to finish with a 2-1 mark in the preliminaries of this year’s FIBA Asia Championship at the Wuhan Sports Complex in Wuhan, China, yesterday afternoon.
It was the third straight contest that Qatar had lost because of their player eligibility issues, including two intentional losses by default against Iran and Uzbekistan prior to yesterday’s contest to protest a decision by the tournament official to forbid foreign players whose Qatari citizenship had been granted after the age of 16 through naturalization.
This has been a common process taken by several Asian teams in recent years in the interest of boosting their levels of basketball talent.
Photo: AFP
Contrary to expectations that they would intentionally have all their players foul out and thus lose the game by default, Qatar surprised Taiwan by actually playing them fairly tough in the opening minutes with only five dressed players that resulted in a 5-all tie.
However, Taiwan made the necessary adjustments to score the next dozen before ending the first quarter with a 23-15 lead.
Qatar managed to play the next two quarters against Taiwan evenly with the same five players and actually came to within two points of Taiwan before running out of gas in the decisive fourth.
Leading Taiwan’s offense with a career-high 35 points was Chang Tsung-hsien, whose strong play was the main reason his team were able to run away with the victory.
As for Qatar, Omar Salem’s team-high 30 led a trio of double-digit scorers who nearly pulled off an upset win.
The win, coupled with Uzbekistan’s loss to Iran, gave Taiwan an outright second-place finish in Group B play, good enough to advance to the second round, which is scheduled to begin tomorrow.
“The win over Uzbekistan was huge for us as far as seeding is concerned,” Taiwan head coach Chou Jung-san said after the game.
His troops will have today off to prepare for their match against Lebanon, who finished second behind South Korea in Group A. Tipoff is scheduled for 11am tomorrow at the Wuhan Sports Complex.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS