Basketball: First-up pre-season win for Breakers

The New Zealand Breakers began their pre-season North Island basketball tour with a 90-81 win over touring American college team Athletes in Action in Rotorua yesterday.

Andrej Lemanis said he was pleased with the result, especially given the fact that his large contingent of Tall Blacks in the roster had only returned from international duty two days earlier.

"This was a good first run, especially given we have only been together a week, and the Tall Blacks in camp for just two days.

"Consequently, we were always going to be a little disjointed about what we did and the AIA team played a style that exposed that, they get in the lanes and play a pressure defence," Lemanis said.

The resulting 17 turnovers were too many, and Lemanis said expected that number to drop as the team became more comfortable on offence.

"There's plenty of work to do as you would expect at this early stage but there were some good signs."

Kirk Penney top-scored for the Breakers with 28, Tony Ronaldson chipping in with 20 and Rick Rickert with 15.

- NZPA