Chinese Taipei Basketball Association (CTBA) released the complete schedule and team rosters for the 2011 Super Basketball League (SBL) season Thursday as the new season is scheduled to tip off on Dec. 25.
A total of 105 games will be played in the regular season from Dec. 25, 2010 to March 20, 2011 in four venues across the country, including Sinjhuang Stadium in the newly formed Xinbei City, Yilan University Gymnasium in the eastern city of Yilan, Taipei Gymnasium in downtown Taipei City and Fengshan Gymnasium in the southern city of Fengshan, Kaohsiung.
Every team will play a 30-game regular season, meeting each of its six opponents five times.
The top four teams will advance to the playoffs, which is scheduled to be played from March 23, 2011 to April 17. Starting from this season, the first round playoffs will adopt the best-of-seven format as well as the finals.
One import player is allowed for every team. The import registration deadline is on Feb. 12, 2011, which means that teams are free to change their imports before that day.
Former Taiwan Beer star forward Lin Chih-chieh and former Yulon point guard Lee Hsueh-lin were not among the final rosters because they will spend the 2011 season in China. Sun Hwan-po, last season's rookie of the year, left Bank of Taiwan for unknown reasons.
According to the CTBA, four of the seven teams were set on their import players -- Zachary Atkinson with Pure Youth, Jason Faulknor with Bank of Taiwan, Keith Gayden with Dacin and an unidentified player with Taiwan Mobile. I'm still checking on his name.
One thing to note though. According to various sources of information, Atkinson was listed at 206cm, which exceeds the SBL's original height limit of 200cm. I'm not sure whether the league has altered or abandoned the height limit. Will check up on that as well.
I will post the full schedule and the full rosters on this blog as soon as possible.