Players reported to the 35-day training camp for the 2008 Jones Cup tournament, the only major basketball event this year for Taiwan NT, on June 3.
Once again, they will be led by veteran Korean head coach Chung Kwon Suk, who led Taiwan to a 6th place finish last year in last year's Asian Championship.
However, Chung will inherit a team without the big-name players, among them Tien Lei, Chen Hsin-an and Lin Chih-chieh, who all pulled out of the national team due to injury.
Players who are out of the 2008 Taiwan NT included Chen Hsin-an, Tien Lei, Lin Chih-chieh, Tseng Wen-ting, Wu Tai-hao, Ho Shou-cheng, Chen Shih-nian, Chen Chih-chung and Chang Chih-feng. All of them were core players of the national squad in the past five years.
Taiwanese-American James Mao, who was going to be called up as a replacement player, could not play in the Jones Cup either because of right foot injury.
That means the 2008 Taiwan NT will be a young and inexperinced team which consists mostly those who had less than three years of international competition experience.
The original 24-man team is now down to 16 players which are listed as follow:
Taiwan Beer: Yang Chin-min, Hsu Hao-cheng
Yulon: Lee Chi-yi, Yang Che-yi, Lee Hsueh-lin, Lu Cheng-ju
dmedia: Ouyang Ching-heng
Dacin: Yue Yin-li, Lee Feng-yong, Chen Tzu-wei, Wang Chih-chun
Pure Youth: Chien Chia-hong, Wu Chian-lung, Lin Chin-pang
Bank of Taiwan: Hsu Chih-chan
Former Taiwan NT players Cheng Chih-lung and Chou Jun-san will serve as assistants.
Ten teams are expected to play in the men's competition in the 2008 Jones Cup, which will be played in Sinjhuang Stadium, Taipei County next month. The tourney is scheduled to tip off on July 10 but the participating teams and the game schedule have yet to be announced by the CTBA.