Basketball: Tall Blacks work hard for second win

Some stern halftime words from coach Tab Baldwin helped lift the Tall Blacks to a 79-62 win over Lithuania at the Four Nations basketball tournament in Perth last night.

After an earlier 90-70 win over China, the Tall Blacks took time to settle and trailed 11-16 at quarter time as the Lithuanian defence kept them guessing.

Martynas Andriukaitis was tough inside for Lithuania, with six points and two rebounds in the first period.

New Zealand's woes were not through a lack of scoring options. They put up 21 shots and were successful with only five.

The second quarter belonged to Lithuanian powerhouse Pavelas Cukinas, who scored 11 points, pulled in three rebounds, blocked one shot and generally caused havoc for the New Zealanders inside.

For the Tall Blacks, Pero Cameron was also strong in the second quarter with eight points, including two three pointers, to keep New Zealand in touch at 34-37 down at halftime.

The New Zealanders came out firing after the break, Phill Jones scoring 11 points in the third quarter to help the Tall Blacks to a 58-55 lead at the three-quarter mark.

Both teams started slowly in the fourth quarter, with the emphasis on tough physical defence, but the Tall Blacks eventually found their shooting range and pushed out to a 15-point win.

Lithuanian coach Kemzura Kestutis lamented their second loss in as many matches, the defeat following an earlier 66-71 loss to Australia.

In contrast, Baldwin was happier with his team's effort after a patchy performance against China.

"When you finish stronger, you're happier," he said.

"We still had periods where we didn't play our best basketball.

"Last night (against China), I was critical of our players' complacency in the second half, but tonight, it was more a case of the coaching staff taking a long time to figure things out."

Baldwin said Lithuania were difficult opponents.

"They're tactically very clever, their players are skilled and defensively they're very unorthodox.

"It took a little time to figure out what they were running and in the end we decided to run just one thing and stick with it."

Guards Lindsay Tait, Mark Dickel, Kirk Penney, Jones and Aaron Olson did "a tremendous job" pressuring their counterparts, he said.

Baldwin remained tightlipped about possible tactics against Australia leading into their match in Sydney on Friday night, the last time the teams meet before the Oceania championships in New Zealand next week.

"It's important, it's Australia," he said.

"I'm not going to say anything else. Everyone in New Zealand knows what it's like to play Australia and how it makes you feel."

New Zealand forward Dillon Boucher said the Tall Blacks had to battle right to the final whistle against Lithuania.

"They were real hard to work out at the start of the match. We managed to keep hammering away at them until we finally wore them down," he said. Australia beat China 81-50 in the other match.

Australian coach Brian Goorjian admitted he adopted a tactic used by New Zealand in their game against with China, looking to put them under extreme pressure from the opening tip.

"I thought last night (China) dropped it a little bit and we just wanted to take a leaf out of New Zealand's book and pressure them a little bit," he said.

"Hopefully we could get them to buckle that way and I thought we did that."

- NZPA