Luke Nevill easily won the nods from members of the Basketball Writers’ Association with an outstanding weekend of play last week to land the league’s Player of the Week honor.
The Bank of Taiwan big man, who returned for his second tour of duty at the start of this season after spending his first one with the formerly Taiwan Mobile Leopards two years ago, showed why he is one of the premier centers in the league by netting 23.5 points and 14.5 rebounds per game against playoff-contending opponents to lead the Bankers to a pair of sound wins.
“[Nevill] has always shown a willingness to learn our system and work with our players since he first joined us and his continuing improvement is a big reason why we are doing much better now compared to before,” a very happy Bank of Taiwan head coach Hung Chun-che said of his hired gun from Australia earlier this week.
The match on Thursday last week between the Bankers and the Dacin Tigers was case in point as Nevill outfought his counterpart Bryan Davis of the US with a season-high 31 points and 16 rebounds to lift his team to a big win in overtime against the third-place Tigers who had won three of their past four heading into the contest.
“What makes [Nevill] so special for us is that his on-court presence makes our other guys like Chen Hsuan-hsiang, Chang Po-sheng and Lee Wei-che play that much better,” Hung added.
Nevill and the rest of the Banking Corp have a chance to extend their winning streak this week with three tough matches ahead, starting with tonight’s confrontation against Kinmen Kaoliang, followed by Saturday’s battle against the Fubon Braves, before Sunday’s showdown against top-ranked Pure Youth Construction.
With the end of the regular season just three weeks away and only a half-game separating the Bankers (fifth place) and the Braves (sixth place), this week promises to be crucial for the financial wizards who could clinch a playoff berth by winning all three games of the week.
Tonight’s Other Contest
Following the match between the Bankers and the Distillers at the Banciao Gymnasium in New Taipei City, Pure Youth are to take on the Braves in the second game where the Braves will feature the return of the league’s top scorer Earl Barron who missed all of last week to nurse a muscle strain.
The Braves will have to find at least one other player to share the scoring burden with Barron against the Builders’ renown pressure defense to have a chance at the win as the four-time defending champs will undoubtedly exploit their tendency to be a one-man team.
Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw on Friday joined their Los Angeles Dodgers teammates in sticking their fists out to show off their glittering World Series rings at a ceremony. “There’s just a lot of excitement, probably more than I can ever recall with the Dodger fan base and our players,” manager Dave Roberts said before Los Angeles rallied to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-5 in 10 innings. “What a way to cap off the first two days of celebrations,” Roberts said afterward. “By far the best opening week I’ve ever experienced. I just couldn’t have scripted it any better.” A choir in the
The famously raucous Hong Kong Sevens are to start today in a big test for a shiny new stadium at the heart of a major US$3.85 billion sports park in the territory. Officials are keeping their fingers crossed that the premier event in Hong Kong’s sporting and social calendar goes off without a hitch at the 50,000-seat Kai Tak Stadium. They hope to entice major European soccer teams to visit in the next few months, with reports in December last year saying that Liverpool were in talks about a pre-season tour. Coldplay are to perform there next month, all part of Hong Kong’s
After fleeing Sudan when civil war erupted, Al-Hilal captain Mohamed Abdelrahman and his teammates have defied the odds to reach the CAF Champions League quarter-finals. They are today to face title-holders Al-Ahly of Egypt in Cairo, with the return match in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Tuesday next week. Al-Hilal and biggest domestic rivals Al-Merrikh relocated to Mauritania after a power struggle broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary force. The civil war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced more than 12 million people, according to the UN. The Democratic Republic of the Congo-born Al-Hilal
Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez and Tommy Edman on Thursday smashed home runs to give the reigning World Series champions the Los Angeles Dodgers a 5-4 victory over Detroit on the MLB’s opening day in the US. The Dodgers, who won two season-opening games in Tokyo last week, raised their championship banner on a day when 28 clubs launched the season in the US. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shuffled his batting lineup with all four leadoff hitters finally healthy as Ohtani was followed by Mookie Betts, then Hernandez and Freddie Freeman in the cleanup spot, switching places with Hernandez. “There’s a Teoscar tax to
RSS