Basketball: Te Arawa snare three titles

The Te Arawa 9-and-under girls' team won their division at the National Maori Basketball Tournament in Rotorua. Roimata Brown, 9, is pictured in action for the team. Photo / Ben Fraser

Te Arawa teams have won three titles at the National Maori Basketball Tournament in Rotorua.

The three-day tournament finished on Saturday at the Energy Events Centre with 89 teams attending.

Three Te Arawa teams won their divisions including the 9-and-under girls' team and the boys' and girls' under-15 teams.

Meanwhile, the Te Arawa men's team just missed out on making the playoffs following a three-way tie in their pool, and the women's team were knocked out in the semifinals by eventual winners Waikato.

The Waikato women's team defeated Ngati Toa 53-47 in the women's final.

The men's title went to Ngati Toa, from Porirua, who defeated Waikato Tainui 99-64 in the final.

"We are really pleased with that," Ngati Toa co-coach Willie Taurima said.

"We played [Waikato] in the final last year and lost to them so this year we wanted to make a statement."

He said they played each other in pool play and Waikato beat them by two points. But that proved to be a good learning curve ahead of the final, he said.

"What we have here is some smart basketball players, so having gone through that game a few days ago was probably a good thing for us. It meant we knew how to deal with Waikato in defence."

He said his team restricted the Waikato attack, which was full of talented dribblers, in the final.

"This was definitely won on defence."

He said they would be back next year to defend their men's title.

Teams represented their iwi or waka at the nationals and competed in the men's, women's, mixed, Special Olympics and age-group grades (9-and-under, 11-and-under, under-13, under-15, and under-17). Some of the grades did not have a final.

The tournament was held for the first time last year and doubled in size this year.