Super Basketball League play is to resume this afternoon with Taiwan Beer taking on Kinmen Kaoliang at the Sinjhuang Sports Complex in New Taipei City.
It is a must-win situation for the Distillers, who need to take both games over the weekend and hope for a Dacin Tigers loss in their remaining game in the regular season for the best of Kinmen to qualify for the upcoming playoffs, as they trail the sixth-placed Tigers by half a game.
Kinmen would lose out in a tie should both clubs finish with identical win-loss marks based on their losing head-to-head record (2-3) during the regular season.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
“It is do or die for us; any way you look at it, we must win both games,” Kinmen Kaoliang head coach Wu Chun-hsiung said earlier this week. “We don’t want to pack up and be done for good.”
The first-year handler has guided his team through some ups and downs over the course of the season, placing as high as No. 4 in the standings as recently as early last month before dropping seven straight games to fall out of the top four.
For the Distillers to win, Player of the Month for last month Bryan Davis needs to have a good showing, distributing the ball offensively, since he will likely be double-teamed by the Brew Crew defense and someone else must rise to the occasion to pick up the scoring slack.
As for Taiwan Beer, who need to win at least one of their two remaining games in the regular season to lock up third place, this is definitely the easier of the two.
In the second game, the Cats face the Yulon Luxgens, who would love to begin the Year of the Sheep with a big win over their archrivals following their upset win over top-ranked Pure Youth Construction two weeks ago to close the Year of the Horse on a high note.
Big man Norvel Pelle of the Tigers will have his hands full guarding the Automakers’ inside threat Herve Lamizana, who has averaged more than 23 points and nearly 10 rebounds per game in the four games he has played since joining Yulon earlier this month, his second tour with Yulon.
In the final game of the day, the Builders face Bank of Taiwan, winners of five consecutive games, with last week’s Player of the Week James Tyler and Coach of the Year favorite Hung Chun-che on the Bankers’ side.
Even though Pure Youth might have a better team as far as the statistics and records are concerned, this could be a game the Bankers steal from them, since the Builders have already clinched a top-seed berth in the playoffs and will likely give their reserves more floor time.
The inside of the paint will likely be crowded, with two of the biggest players in the league, Tyler and the Builders’ Garret Siler, pushing and shoving their way around.
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