Monday, April 04, 2005

Cathay Life wins 14th straight women's title

Cathay Life beat Taiyuen Textile 2-0 in the WSBL (Women's Super basketball League) best-of-three series last weekend to win its 14th straight women's title, once again proving its dominance in Taiwanese women's basketball.

Cathay Life beat Taiyun 98-80 in the deciding game. Center Cheng Huei-yun had 28 points, 15 rebounds and 6 assists and was named the Most Valuable Player. Veteran Chien Wei-juan had 7 points and 13 assists.

Following the success of the SBL last season, CTBA decided to transform women's basketball with the same format. Women's A-League became the WSBL, although it didn't change much besides the league name.

Actually Taiwanese women's basketball is facing a dire situation right now. There are only four teams left. Number of teams went from six to five last year, this year there's one more team was shut down. It's not like there's no women playing basketball in Taiwan. It's that no corporation wants to support a women's basketball team.

Also, Cathay Life is too dominant that almost everyone gives up before challenging them.

Standing of the inaugural WSBL season:

1. Cathay Life 14-1, 2. Taiyuen Textile 9-6, 3. Chunghwa Telecom 5-10, 4. Taipower 2-13

As you can see, all team are supported by big companies. Cathay Life is one of the biggest insurance companies in Taiwan. Taiyuen Textile is a company under Yulon corporation, the No.1 automobile company in Taiwan. Chunghwa Telecom and Taipower (Taiwan Power Company) are both state-controlled public companies.

**Women's NT head coach
Cathay Life's Hong Ling-yao was named once again as the women's NT head coach. She will lead the national team in three upcoming competition: the 2005 Asian Women's Championship, which takes place in Qinhuangdao, China in June, the 3rd East Asia games in Macau(October, 2005), and the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar.

Hong is expected to submit the 15 or 16-man preliminary roster for the Asian Championship on April 9th.