Coming off back-to-back wins against Joshua Munzon and the Westsports Malaysia Dragons, a tired Chong Son Kung Fu squad needed to gut out an 88-77 win over the Formosa Dreamers, Saturday afternoon at the Changhua Stadium in Taiwan.
Not wanting to be stunned by cellar-dwelling Formosa, Filipino-American floor general Mikh McKinney played all 40 minutes of the game, tallying 15 points on 5-for-15 shooting with seven rebounds and three steals.
Down 67-62 early in the final frame, McKinney, together Anthony Tucker, Justin Howard, and fellow Fil-Am Caelan Tiongson, locked down the Dreamers. Kung Fu outscored the Dreamers 28-14 during the last 10 minutes of the contest, leading by as much as 13 points, 88-75, with 1:30 left.
Tiongson and Howard though struggled with foul trouble with the former fouling out with two minutes left while the latter acquired his fifth foul and a technical to boot with 3:11 left.
Tiongson, a 6-foot-4 swingman, had 14 points, nine rebounds, three assists, a steal, and a block in 35 minutes of game time.
Chong Son is now 6-1 in the standings, 1.5 games behind Hong Kong. Formosa, on the other hand, dropped its 10th game in 11 outings.
Howard led Kung Fu with 23 points while fellow World Import Tucker almost notched a triple-double with 22 points, 14 rebounds and nine assists.
Formosa’s World Import Ronnie Aguilar paced Formosa in the third frame, scoring 16 of his 23 points during that span. He also grabbed 12 rebounds but committed seven turnovers. Local Sung Wei Wu scored a career-high 17 markers off the bench.
