MIT Athletics
Dispatch from Taiwan—MIT Men's Basketball Team Scores Overseas
The MIT men's basketball team after winning the championship game against Yo Ming, a team that competes in Taiwan's professional Super Basketball League.
Hello Friends of MIT Men's Basketball,
Another chapter has just been written in MIT basketball history. Half a world away from Cambridge, there was a great basketball game today in the finals of the first annual Kainan University Invitational Tournament, held just outside Taipei. It was basketball as it should be played—a packed gymnasium, an energized, excited crowd and electricity in the air long before tipoff. The MIT men's basketball team reached the finals by successive victories over the host Kainan team, then a Japanese college squad, and finally the National Taiwan University.
The opponents in the finals were Yo Ming, a team that competes in the professional SBL (Super Basketball League) in this basketball-crazy country. As we have learned, basketball is second only to baseball in popularity here. With a host of mobile, quick sharpshooters, the SBL team had consistently run up scores of over 100 points, beating a very solid university group from the Philippines by 20 points to reach the finals. In most eyes, they were the favorites going in.
But our guys beat them—convincingly.
The final was 80-68. You would have loved how MIT played—aggressive defense that keyed several fast breaks, good ball movement on offense, a rebounding edge on both ends of the court despite several large, fast 6'7" athletes on the opposition. It was such a great game and a great win that the team and many spectators celebrated for the better part of an hour afterward.
Hamidou Soumare '08 signs an autograph for one of his many fans.
The fan support was so huge that it was practically a home game for us—except that a few thousand people would never show up at an MIT home game. It really helped that sophomore guard Alan Ho '08 of California has Taiwanese roots. So does Alice Yeh '09 from Seattle. Alice plays on the MIT women's team and was there visiting family. After we met in the Logan airport ticket line, she became an integral part of the team, helping with countless Mandarin translations and myriad other tasks.
This entire group of young people represented themselves and MIT so very well on and off the court. In one spontaneous gesture shortly after the win, each player went and shook the hands of each of the seven university presidents sitting in the front row. They had all come to the University for a just-concluded international conference and, at the invitation of Kainan University President Michael Tang, had stopped at the gym afterward to see the game.
The trip also included four engaging cultural exchanges with Kainan faculty and students, and even an arts and entertainment talent night featuring student performances and an improvisation competition among the athletes (also captured by MIT with a one-of-a-kind hip-hop and dance routine). And the MIT Club of Taiwan invited the entire MIT party to a wonderful meal that included an engaging talk by a local university professor on Taiwan's National Palace Museum. As Coach Larry Anderson aptly put it, the hospitality everywhere was "off the charts." Indeed this was a complete experience. It was all over the top.
Cheers,
Bob Ferrara '67, basketball reunion committee
Larry Anderson, men's basketball coach
Oli Eslinger, assistant men's basketball coach
Evans Boney '06, assistant men's basketball coach
Published June 22, 2006
