ULAANBAATAR (Mongolia) - Pelita Jaya Basketball showed some pride and beat New Taipei, 103-74, to salvage a third-place finish in the BCL Asia-East 2025 Final 4, Saturday evening at the MBank Arena.
Their BCL Asia return bid crushed by the Ulaanbaatar Xac Broncos barely 24 hours ago, the Indonesian side still made sure to end their campaign on a high note behind a big second half to secure a spot in the podium.
"I'm just proud of my guys for bouncing back from yesterday," said head coach Justin Tatum. "We wanted to really work on us. We wanted to work on the mistakes we made yesterday ... as you see, we did that today."
"A lot of guys were able to be significant in this game. With 27 assists as a team, that stands out to me," he added. "We could've had our turnovers a little bit less, but the guys were sharing the ball."
Chris McCullough top-scored for Pelita Jaya with 31 points and 12 rebounds, doing much of the damage in the fourth quarter as he produced 13 of the team's 19 points to spearhead their strong windup.
His efforts in the final 10 minutes also preserved the contributions of Jeff Withey, JaQuori McLaughlin, and Agassi Goantara as the troika were responsible in giving themselves the lead for good in the second frame.
It was McLaughlin who helped Withey and McCullough put together a 13-6 rally to turn a narrow four-point lead to a 55-44 advantage entering the halftime break, setting up the breakaway in the chapter that followed.
Withey also finished with a solid double-double of 19 points and 15 rebounds, alongside 2 blocks. McLaughlin came through with 16 points, 4 rebounds, and 6 assists, while Goantara delivered 15 points and 7 rebounds.
"I think we showed Coach and the PJ organization that we can bounce back, that we can win the game after a bad loss yesterday. We didn't want to go back home 0-2, so we made sure to fight," Goantara said.
Pelita Jaya will head back home soon and turn all their attention back to the ongoing 2025 Indonesian Basketball League (IBL) season, where they have a championship to defend.
Chris Johnson, on the other hand, led the Kings with 26 points on 40-percent shooting and 14 rebounds as they finished the Final 4 with a pair of losses. Lin Li-Jen backed him up with 15 points off the bench.
Big man Wang Po Chih was the only other player in double figures for New Taipei with 12 points as they tried to step up on a night lead guard Mike Efevberha was held to only 8 points on 11 attempts in 19 minutes.
The Kings will now focus on the TPBL Semi-Finals back home.
FIBA