THE DREAM LEAGUE
Asian American / Open Basketball Leagues
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RL Cruisers 59, New York Fury 52 |
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Cruisers Finish Off Fury, Advance To Chip | |
| December 6, 2007 – New York, NY (DL) – Stan Yeung must have been watching Thursday night football or something. He missed the AAA Championship earlier in the evening and he also wasn’t in the line-up for the Cruisers all-important semifinal match-up against the Fury either. Well, then again, neither was Christian Stevens for the Fury. Life called and so these two key ingredients were gone for their teams and, in the end, a missing Stevens was far more detrimental to the Fury than a missing Yeung was to the Cruisers. Bummer. The public was really hoping to see how the Cruisers’ bigs were going to deal with Stevens. It’s never happened before on the DL platform. Stevens missed 99% of last season with bad ankles (when the Cruiser bigs were Renegades' bigs) and he was also out of the line-up in the regular season match-up this season. (As was Yeung). Hey, since when did we focus so much on who wasn’t there?
All we’re sayin’ is that for a big semifinal game, the right to get to the chip, it would’ve been much more sexy if one of the NL’s premiere point guards and premiere big men would have been there. But we had a few players left, and so a game still took place. A pretty fine one at that. With a couple MVPs scattered around on the floor, the game didn’t lose too much cache. An MVP three times, Shawn De Los Reyes, rocked and rolled. An MVP in the 2006 Winter/Spring, CB Liu, was on point tip. And, certainly a worthy MVP choice every season, Tony Hu, was tough as always. All three of these men played instrumental parts in the game, but in the end it was just a little too much Cruise control as RL advanced to the chip 59-52 where they will face the awaiting Spartans. Things got off to a hopping mad start as in the 1st, both teams burned the nets. The Cruisers used 4 threes to build a 20-16 lead as CB had two of those and a sight-for-sore-eyes Danny Chin hit another (Chin has sort of been lost in the Cruiser concept). The final one came at the buzzer as Hu hit Leon Chu on the wing for it. Roger Redhead (11 pts, 7 rbs) countered with 7 solo points in the period and both sides sizzled before things took a frigid turn in comparison in the 2nd. After combining for 36 points in the 1st, the teams dropped to 16 in the 2nd. CB stayed hot however as he dropped another pair of bombs that opened up a 10-point lead before the Fury went on a 5-1 run to close the half, keeping them within 29-23. If you take that 5-1 run and couple it with what the Fury did coming out in the 3rd, you got a very good game. De Los Reyes put his team on his back for a stretch and led the Fury on a 15-8 run in the quarter that meant a 20-9 spurt over 2 quarters which made the game a 1-point one, 38-37 after Ren Hsieh (12 pts, 4 assts) dropped a threebie. Before the quarter would settle, De Los Reyes had scored 7 points in the frame, the Fury had figured out how to deny CB the ball, and they were down only 44-40 for it. Alas, while they had been keeping Hu in check throughout the game (he had just 2 points at the half), in the 3rd, when the Fury tightened up their perimeter defense, it meant more openings down low and Hu (11 pts, 6 rbs) did not hold back as he was finally able to get his first field goals to go. (This is where missing Yeung, who loves to find Hu on the go, was readily apparent). So, since Hu warmed up, the Fury then had to revert back to denying him his looks, and in the 4th, that meant CB would have openings once again. He would not disappoint. While the game stayed close, CB was there time and again to make sure the Cruisers were the ones in front. After Rich Chang sank a jumper for the Fury, CB bagged a trey for breathing room (51-47). De Los Reyes (17 pts, 2 assts) hit a 3 and a slicing lay-up with 1:52 to knot the game, but CB (20 pts) was there again with his sixth and final triple with 55 seconds to go that proved to be the knock-out punch before the Cruisers iced it with free throws. The Fury pack for the off-season and must find a way to figure out how to throw a consistent line-up out on the floor. This season, they were ravaged by injuries, sudden leave of absences, and other miscellaneous reasons that saw Stevens, Jeff Moy, Phil Moon, James Li, Albert Chung, and Alvin Wang miss significant time. For the Cruisers, more immediately, the future is staring straight back at them in the face. They’re in the championship and their task is simple. Beat the Spartans. Twice. Simple, right? Right. |
Score by Quarters
| Team | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | OT | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York Fury | 16 | 7 | 17 | 12 | - | 52 |
| RL Cruisers | 20 | 9 | 15 | 15 | - | 59 |
Boxscore
| New York Fury - 52 | |||||||||||
| Player | FG | 3PT | FT | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO | F | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chang, Rich | 2 / 2 [1.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| Chung, Albert | DNP | ||||||||||
| Chung, Harris | DNP | ||||||||||
| De Leon, Andrew | DNP | ||||||||||
| De Los Reyes, Shawn | 6 / 18 [0.333] | 1 / 4 [0.250] | 4 / 7 [0.571] | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 17 | |
| Hsieh, Ren | 4 / 14 [0.286] | 1 / 8 [0.125] | 3 / 4 [0.750] | 3 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 12 | |
| Li, James | DNP | ||||||||||
| Meonske, Ming | 3 / 4 [0.750] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 6 | |
| Moon, Phil | DNP | ||||||||||
| Moy, Jeff | DNP | ||||||||||
| Redhead, Roger | 5 / 13 [0.385] | 1 / 7 [0.143] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 11 | |
| Song, Peter | DNP | ||||||||||
| Stevens, Christian | DNP | ||||||||||
| Wang, Alvin | DNP | ||||||||||
| Yeh, Young | DNP | ||||||||||
| Youn, Chris | 1 / 8 [0.125] | 0 / 2 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 12 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | |
| Zheng, Dave | DNP | ||||||||||
| 21 / 59 [0.356] | 3 / 21 [0.143] | 7 / 11 [0.636] | 33 | 11 | 8 | 3 | 15 | 14 | 52 | ||
| RL Cruisers - 59 | |||||||||||
| Player | FG | 3PT | FT | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO | F | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chan, George | 3 / 11 [0.273] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 3 / 6 [0.500] | 10 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 9 | |
| Cheng, David | DNP | ||||||||||
| Chin, Danny | 3 / 9 [0.333] | 2 / 8 [0.250] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 6 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 8 | |
| Chu, Howard | DNP | ||||||||||
| Chu, Leon | 2 / 8 [0.250] | 1 / 4 [0.250] | 4 / 5 [0.800] | 4 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 9 | |
| Hu, Tony | 2 / 10 [0.200] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 7 / 8 [0.875] | 6 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 11 | |
| Liu, CB | 7 / 14 [0.500] | 6 / 10 [0.600] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 20 | |
| Tso, Quincy | DNP | ||||||||||
| Yeung, Garry | 1 / 2 [0.500] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | |
| Yeung, Stan | DNP | ||||||||||
| 18 / 54 [0.333] | 9 / 22 [0.409] | 14 / 19 [0.737] | 32 | 12 | 9 | 1 | 12 | 14 | 59 | ||
Referees
| Sean Fincher: | Rate Me |
| William Reeves: | Rate Me |