Basketball: Tall Blacks keep pressure on to slam Costa Rica

The Tall Blacks maintained their unbeaten run at the William Jones Cup basketball tournament in Taiwan with a convincing, yet hard-fought, 76-58 win over Costa Rica yesterday.

The New Zealanders built up an early run of 11 points to just two to assert their dominance and although the Central Americans cut the margin to three late in the first spell, a couple of Chris Tupu three-pointers helped to give Keith Mair's men a handy 45-34 buffer at the break.

New Zealand, backing up from their opening 89-57 defeat of South Africa on Tuesday, kept up their strong defensive showing throughout the run home, nullifying the opposition's sharp-shooters.

Coach Mair said defence was the key to the victory: "The boys made a lot of mistakes today but the defence was good and that kept us in the game.

"In the end we just wore them down. We didn't give them any easy shots.

"They played very aggressively, no prisoners stuff, and though some of our guys were stunned at times we stuck to it."

Unlike their opposition so far, Mair has not been reluctant to give his entire squad court time to conserve energy in the humid conditions.

He said both South Africa and Costa Rica had been loathe to use their bench, meaning they ran out of gas down the stretch.

Mair predicted tougher times ahead at their last buildup tournament before the Olympics, with Taiwan B today and then the bigger, physical Koreans to face tomorrow.

"Our defence will be sorely tested then, they've already shown they'll use their bench a lot better."

- NZPA