Watching Taiwanese basketball on the television, while fun, rarely causes me to think about NCAA basketball in the States. Honestly, the level of play is not that good. And that is why Chou stuck out so much. At 6’3” and around 200 lbs he has legitimate shooting guard size for international play as well as college ball in the States.Watch this video to see what I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7EPrKf1sXE. Chou also more than held his own during various international high school camps.

I was excited when I saw that Chou signed to play with Salt Lake Community College for two reasons. First, SLCC plays in one of the best conferences in the NJCAA so we will be able to see him play against legitimate ball players. Second, SLCC is great about streaming video and radio feeds of their games online, so even in Taiwan we will be able to follow his games!

Chou has started off the year well. He is playing 15 minutes a game and averaging 6.75 points per contest. The SLCC coach is obviously focusing on spreading out the minutes early in the season as ten players are averaging more than 10 minutes per game. A couple things have really impressed me about his play so far. First, he is extremely patient on offense, only taking the shots that come to him in the offensive system. You can see this by the fact he is shooting 55% from the field. Second, I love how he is taking the ball hard to the rack. I worried about whether or not he would be able to compete athletically, and on offense the answer has been a resounding “YES!” It is nice to see him not relying exclusively on the three-pointer like many of his compatriots. As the season goes on it will be interesting to see if he is able to fill up the other areas of the stats sheet a little more.   

His next game is on Wednesday, December 2nd here in Taiwan. The game time is still ‘TBA.’ Since it is an away game I am not sure if the game will be televised, but it is worth checking out in the morning just in case. http://www.slccbruins.com/schedule.aspx?path=mbball Click on details for the stream link.