Yulon Luxgen, which won four titles in the SBL’s brief eight-year history, is obviously experiencing its lowest point in the SBL era.

After a 20-point loss to Taiwan Beer on Saturday, it has dropped six of its last eight games and is currently fourth on the standing with 13 wins and 11 losses.

On Saturday, Yulon trailed by as many as 31 points at one point. I don’t think I have ever seen that when late head coach Chien Yi-fei and former coach Lee Yun-kwang, Zhang Xuelei were at the helm.

Which would probably explain how much pressure was on the shoulder of the first-year head coach Chiu Chi-yi, who is also a former Yulon player.

But let’s be fair. The former head coaches had Chen Hsin-an and Tseng Wen-ting on the roster, a privilege Chiu did not have. Chen had signed with Pure Youth after returning from China and Tseng, the SBL’s top center, is now playing in Shanghai, China.

Second, Chiu perhaps needs more time to mature as a head coach, since he did not have prior head coaching experience at any level. As for why Yulon hired him as its head coach, that’s beyond me.

On the other hand, Dacin beat KKL 69-54 Saturday for its third straight win since Huang Wan-lung took over as its head coach (despite Huang was still listed as the technical adviser).

Under Huang, who is known for his defensive-minded and ball-control strategy, Dacin players have been more selective with their shots.

However, Dacin was pounded by Taiwan Beer tonight and lost by 15, 69-54. The team received three unsportsmanlike fouls and Huang had a technical foul as well.

So far, Pure Youth is sitting comfortably at the top of the standing with 19-5 and has clinched the playoff seed. It holds a five-game lead over the closest opponent.

Dacin, Taiwan Beer and Yulon would be likely the remaining three playoff teams.

Standings:

PY 19-5
Dacin 14-10
TB 13-10
Yulon 13-11
TM 10-13
KKL 9-14
BOT 4-19

Filed under: SBL
Taiwan Hoops

As you probably noted I haven’t had a lot of time or inclination to post updates here.

I frequently post on Facebook. Feel free to subscribe to my updates, they are 99.99% public and 85.32% irrelevant. (I did post a thing about Mass Effect today though.)

There is also a very active forum here which I sometimes maintain when the screaming is loud enough.

Broken Toys

Nan-shan HS revenged its bitter loss last year in the HBL finals against Song-shan HS yesterday. This time it routed Nen-jen HS 72-55 in the title game to win its sixth men’s championship in school history.

Meanwhile, Taipei First Girls’ HS, one of the best girls’ high schools in the nation academically-wise, shocked everyone with its 75-67 win in overtime to claim its first women’s HBL title in school history.

Nan-shan did not give Nen-jen any chance Sunday night, leading from start to finish and took the game out of reach with a 25-9 third period.

The “twin tower” of Nan-shan each turned in a double-double performance with MVP Yang Hsin-chih tallying 19 points and 11 rebounds and Chen Kuan-chuan collecting 19 and 14.

Lee Kun-yu was the only Nen-jen player in double-digit scoring with 11 points.

Nen-jen lost for the third time in the last four years in the HBL finals. It lost in 2009 and 2010 to Song-shan.

In the women’s title game, Chang Yu-han banked in a three-pointer with 10.8 seconds left in regulation to take the game into overtime before Taipei First Girls’ HS controlled the momentum and upset Pu Men for a win that shocked the nation with the First Lady Chow Mei-ching – a TFGHS alum – looking on in the stands.

The win, which helped the school to its first title in 15 years, was not easy, considering that TFGHS, which entered the final four as the No. 3 seed, was routed by Pu Men 70-38 three weeks ago in the quarterfinal round.

Chueh Yu-hsuan led TFGHS with 16 points and tournament MVP Chang Yu-han had 15 points, 7 rebounds and 6 steals.

Cheng Yi-hsiu led Pu Men with 26 and 10 and Feng Hsin-lien added

Results of the semifinal on March 3:
Men’s
Nan-shan HS 69-43 Keelung Commercial and Industrial Vocational HS
Nen-jen HS 67-53 Chiang-shu HS

Women’s
Pu Men HS 67-48 Chih-ping HS
TFGHS 79-73 Tamsui HS

Men’s awards:
MVP: Yang Hsin-chih (Nan-shan)
Freshman of the Year: Liu Jen-hao (Nen-jen)
Rebounding leader: Chen Kuan-chuan (Nan-shan)
Assist leader: Chiu Jih-cheng (Nan-shan)
Steal leader: Chiu Jih-cheng (Nan-shan)
Block leader: Lee Chia-jui (Keelung Commercial and Industrial Vocational HS)

Women’s award:
MVP: Chang Yu-han (TFGHS)
Freshman of the Year: Cheng Yu-chieh (TFGHS)
Rebounding leader: Chen Wei-an (Yung-jen)
Assist leader: Lin Yu-ting (Tamsui)
Steal leader: Huang Yu-ting (Pu Men)
Block leader: Chen Wei-an (Yung-jen)

Men’s final standings:
1. Nan-shan HS
2. Nen-jen HS
3. Keelung Commercial and Industrial Vocational
4. Chiang-shu HS
5. Hsin-jung HS
6. Youth HS
7. Yilan HS
8. Tai-shan HS

Women’s final standings:
1. Taipei First Girls’ HS
2. Pu Men HS
3. Tamsui HS
4. Chih-ping HS
5. Hu-jiang HS
6. Yung-jen HS
7. Jin-ou HS
8. Yang-ming HS

(Photos: HBL, UDN.com)

Filed under: high school
Taiwan Hoops

KKL rookie forward Liu Chen was named Week 8 MVP after averaging 19.3 points and 7.3 rebounds in three games last week.

Liu’s performance was highlighted by a 23-point, 12-rebound effort in a win over Dacin.

He had 31 points in the media voting over Quincy Davis of PY, who had 18 points, and TB forward Cheng Jen-wei’s 12 points.

KKL head coach Hsu Chih-chao gave Liu credit for his scoring ability and improvement on rebounding, saying that Liu could perhaps play in the Taiwanese national team in the future.

In related news, the Chinese Taipei Basketball Association (CTBA) decided to postpone the decision on the controversy surrounding import heights to the next season.

Despite several teams have file complaints over the height of Taiwan Beer import Kibwe Trim, who was listed by TB as 6-7 but appeared to be taller than 6-9, the CTBA said it did not make sense to resolve the issue at the moment with less than two months remaining before the end of the regular season.

Yulon Luxgen, one of the teams that filed the complaints, said it would not pursue the issue, but hoped that the CTBA would establish a fair mechanism to determine heights.

CTBA President Ting Shou-chung said he does not rule out eliminating the height restriction of import players next season.

(Photo: China Times)

Filed under: SBL
Taiwan Hoops

(This is a post in response to Jon Jones, smArtist for hire’s technolusty blog post from yesterday.)

Hi, I’m Scott, I’m a technoweenie.

I try to keep everything pretty simple… my primary “work” machine is my Macbook Pro. I’ve used it for years now, and now that I’m at a workplace that doesn’t freak out when I bring my own machine in for work, I can use it as my primary work machine yet again. I have years’ worth of handy OSX applications so it really is a force multiplier. And because it’s OSX and not Windows it actually, you know, rarely crashes or goes down. See?

Mmm, delicious uptime goodness.

And for toting it between work and home, I have a docking station set up at both places so I can just drop the laptop into the dock and fwoomf, I’m up.

So why am I such a fervent Machead? Because it has stuff that works, generally far more efficiently and elegantly than Windows equivalents, and having stuff that works makes me look smarter. Apps that see regular use while I work:

Mail.app (comes with OSX): I love Mail.app. It just works, and allows me to search years’ worth of email in seconds. Couldn’t live without it, and I haven’t found anything as just-work-ish on Windows. Sometimes I get seduced by some feature in Postbox, but I always come back to Mail.app.

Excel: The OSX marketplace for spreadsheet applications is pretty limited. Apple’s version, Numbers, isn’t good enough for serious work. Excel for the Mac is functionally equivalent to the Windows version. Some things you’ll never escape.

Keynote: Why I originally bought my Mac – I blame Trey Ratcliff for this one, he made Keynote presentations that were things of painful beauty. Once you use Keynote, you’ll never use Powerpoint again.

WriteRoom: One of the hardest things to do is to concentrate on just writing. At least for me. (It’s also why I work better on OSX. People tell me “Oh, there’s no games on that!” Well, yes. I have a gaming machine for that. No games is a *plus*.) WriteRoom is the best of the minimal text editors – you can easily just focus on writing and hide everything else.

Eclipse: Eclipse is the Swiss Army Knife of code editors. Open source, cross platform (it runs in Java but still runs fairly well on modern machines) and generally is the best at what it does. Except for web page editing. For that I have:

Coda: the best web page editor on any platform.

Pixelmator: I’ve just started switching to this from Photoshop, which I’m more than a few versions behind on. Pixelmator is affordable for normal people and eminently usable for image manipulation.

Balsamiq Mockups: Another cross-platform app (using Adobe Air), this does one thing and does it very well – it helps you quickly kick out user interface prototypes. Among other handy features, it creates everything in Comic Sans font just to make clear to everyone THIS IS A PROTOTYPE DO NOT USE THIS IN A SHIPPING PRODUCT FOR THE PUBLIC. Seriously if you use Comic Sans in anything public-facing I will hurt you.

That covers most things I use on a close-to-daily basis. I have a Windows desktop at work for tool-chain related things (yes occasionally I must work with other people) and an iPad which I use mostly to take notes and read newspapers (only half of which is work related). But my MBP is my baby. DON’T TAKE MY BABY.

Broken Toys

The SBL All-Star Weekend will be held in the southern port city of Greater Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second largest city, for the first time from Feb. 25-26.

Due to various reasons, the All-Star Game was not held during the past two years.

Former NBA player Noel Felix led all players in the All-Star voting. The results are listed as follows:

Blue Team
- Starters
Noel Felix (Dacin) 16.2p, 8.5rb, 2.6blk
Tien Lei (Dacin) 14.5p, 6.8rb
Chou Po-chen (Yulon) 10.9p, 6.6rb
Wang Chih-chun (Dacin) 4.4p
Chen Chih-chung (Yulon) 10.3p, 4.7a
- Substitutes
Lee Chi-yi (Yulon) 4.5p
Lin Yi-hui (Dacin) 10.8p, 4.9rb
Lu Cheng-ju (Yulon) 17.5p
Chou Shih-yuan (Yulon) 8p
Hsu Hao-cheng (Dacin) 5.4p
Shan Wei-fan (KKL) 14.4p, 4.4rb
Elbert Fuqua (KKL) 15.3p, 12.3rb

White Team
- Starters
Quincy Davis (PY) 19.6p, 12.3rb, 2.6blk
Chang Jung-hsuan (TM) 9.1p
Chen Hsin-an (PY) 11.1p, 4.9rb, 3.4a
Wu Yung-jen (TB) 3.3p, 3rb, 2.4a
Yang Yu-ming (TB) 4.3p
- Substitutes
John Vaudreuil (BOT) 15.1p, 11.9rb
Doug Creighton (PY) 11.4, 4.5rb
Ge Chih-hao (PY) 10.5p, 3.2rb, 3.4a
Su Yi-chieh (TM) 10.6p, 3.9rb, 5.7a
He Shou-cheng (TB) 12p, 4.4rb
Chen Shun-hsiang (BOT) 18.7p
Yang Chin-min (TB) 17.6p, 5.3rb, 1.9s

Hsu Hao-cheng (Dacin) and John Vaudreuil (BOT) were added to the roster after Chang Chih-feng and Chien Chia-hung pulled out of the game due to injury.

In my opinion, this voting system is seriously flawed as it already became only a popularity contest.

Wang Chih-chun of Dacin made the starting lineup as point guard despite he averaged only 4.4 points. Same things happened to guards on the White Team. Wu Yung-jen (3.3p) and Yang Yu-ming (4.3p) made the starting lineups although they did not even start on Taiwan Beer.

Numbers don’t tell all the stories, but this is getting ridiculous.

There were a number of notable omissions, such as Cheng Jen-wei of Taiwan Beer (12.2p, 7.7rb), Chen Ching-huan of Taiwan Mobile (11.3p, 4.6rb) and Hsu Chih-chang of Bank of Taiwan (15.6p, 8.7rb).

Ryan Wright (20.1p, 14.7rb) and Yulon’s Kevin Johnson (19.1p, 16.3rb) were not selected either. Since that the league wouldn’t want to place all seven import players on the All-Star Team, it’s probably understandable.

Kibwe Trim of Taiwan Beer is averaging 16.2p and 12.2 rebounds. I think he was overlooked because he has played only four games with the team.

Side events such as the slam-dunk contest and three-point shootout will be held during the weekend.

Filed under: SBL
Taiwan Hoops

[Left: Huang Fan-shan, Cathay Life; Right: Tsai Pei-chen, Taiyuan]

Cathay Life routed Taiyuan 83-65 and Chunghwa Telecom beat Taipower 60-54 Wednesday as Cathay Life leads the first round of the six-round WSBL regular season 3-0 and Chunghwa Telecom followed with 2-1.

Cathay was led by Lan Hao-yu’s 19 points. Chiang Feng-chun, who re-signed with Cathay Life after leaving the team for one year, had 14 points. Huang Fan-shan had 10 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists. Chan Chi-fang led Taiyuan with 19 points. Ma Yi-hung did not play due to injury.

Hsu Chien-hui paced Chunghwa Telecom with 21 and 10. Lin Chi-wen had 15 points for Taipower, which remained winless.

The 2012 WSBL regular season runs from Feb 11 to April 29.

[Lin Chi-wen of Taipower]

Standings:
Cathay Life 3-0
Chunghwa Telecom 2-1
Taipower 1-2
Taiyuan Textile 0-3

Filed under: wsbl
Taiwan Hoops

A Congressman stops by to post in your official forums

Broken Toys

I claim EQ in the name of the GNOLLS

Everquest 1 going free-to-play.

With the announcement, the frozen-in-amber separate EQMac server is also going away, which disappointed the people who preferred EQ frozen in amber.

Broken Toys

Beirut to host Champions Cup; Tokyo to host re-christened FIBA Asia Cup

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: The FIBA Asia calendar of events for 2012 has been announced.

The calendar will tip off with the 23rd FIBA Asia Champions Cup, FIBA Asia’s premier event for club teams, to be hosted by Lebanon at Beirut from Jun 2 – 10, 2012.

The calendar then moves to Mongolian capital UIaanbaatar for the 22nd FIBA Asia U18 Championship, the qualifying event for the 2013 FIBA World U19 Championship, from Aug 17 – 26.

Mongolia thus makes its debut as a host city of a FIBA Asia event.

Tokyo in Japan is the next stop for the calendar as 10 top National Teams assemble for the 4th FIBA Asia Cup, earlier known as the FIBA Asia Stankovic Cup, from Sept 14 – 22.

The champions from the 4th FIBA Asia Cup will earn a direct qualification to the 27th FIBA Asia Championship in 2013.

Batu Pahat in Malaysia will play host to the finale of this year’s FIBA Asia calendar – the 21st FIBA Asia U18 Championship for Women, the qualifying event for the 2013 FIBA World U19 Championship for Women.

The complete FIBA Asia 2012 calendar

Date, Event, Venue
2-10 Jun, 23rd FIBA Asia Champions Cup, Beirut, Lebanon
17-26 Aug, 22nd FIBA Asia U18 Championship, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
14-22 Sep, 4th FIBA Asia Cup, Tokyo, Japan
29 Sep – 6 Oct, 21st FIBA Asia U18 Championship for Women, Batu Pahat, Malaysia

Filed under: fiba asia, stankovic cup
Taiwan Hoops