{"id":92609,"date":"2025-08-24T15:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T15:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/92609\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T15:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T15:36:08","slug":"bigger-party-for-asian-university-basketball-league-next-year-as-taiwan-college-win-crown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/92609\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Bigger party\u2019 for Asian University Basketball League next year as Taiwan college win crown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Taiwan\u2019s National Chengchi University, the NCCU Griffins, were crowned champions of the Asian University Basketball League in Hangzhou on Sunday after they beat mainland China\u2019s Tsinghua University to the first pan-regional intercollegiate title.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The 82-79 win at Binjiang Gymnasium marked the end of the inaugural event, which saw 12 universities from China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mongolia pitted against one another in 24 matches across seven days, but the league\u2019s chief said more teams would play when the competition returns next year.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cWe\u2019re going to have more teams and more groups. We\u2019re looking to have 15 or 16 teams,\u201d said Jay Li Jintian, chief executive of AUBL, on Sunday. \u201cThe new season, the first to have home and away matches, will start in late 2026.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cWe might plan some pre-season, but the 2026-2027 season is likely to run from November to next April. We\u2019re definitely going to have more than 12 teams taking part in the tournament next year, and we are likely to have an \u2018Elite Eight\u2019 knockout tournament in one city.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Li said the proposed single-elimination knockout stage does not have to be held in China, but rather in the \u201cmost suitable\u201d market in the region.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"NCCU\u2019s players react after their win over Tsinghua University in the final. Photo: AUBL\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/img.i-scmp.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto\/sites\/default\/files\/d8\/images\/canvas\/2025\/08\/24\/0c6c8da9-e089-4bfb-aeec-da253d6fbf03_f80342f6.jpg\" title=\"NCCU\u2019s players react after their win over Tsinghua University in the final. Photo: AUBL\"\/>NCCU\u2019s players react after their win over Tsinghua University in the final. Photo: AUBL<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cIt\u2019s all flexible at this point, and it\u2019s too early to say,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re still talking about a lot of things, but we will finalise everything by the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taiwan\u2019s National Chengchi University, the NCCU Griffins, were crowned champions of the Asian University Basketball League in Hangzhou&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[58727,58733,64,58728,58734,63,726,58729,21421,68658,58736,28301,10340,941,58731,27203,58735,5813,85,13430],"class_list":["post-92609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-asian-university-basketball-league","tag-asian-university-sports-federation","tag-au","tag-aubl","tag-ausf","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-binjiang-gymnasium","tag-chinese-basketball-association","tag-etugen-university","tag-hakuoh-university","tag-hangzhou","tag-hong-kong","tag-japan","tag-jay-li-jintian","tag-mongolia","tag-national-chengchi-university","tag-south-korea","tag-sports","tag-tsinghua-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}