KEY POINTS:
Australia duly claimed the Oceania women's basketball title, defeating a willing but outgunned New Zealand 87-46 in the final in Dunedin on Saturday.
Having beaten New Zealand 78-46 and Fiji 136-32 in the the preliminary round, the world champions showed their class against their hosts.
New Zealand, led by hard working centre Angela Marino, were allowed only brief unchallenged glimpses at the Australia basket throughout the match.
The taller, more athletic Australians were more accurate in their shooting, sinking 53 per cent of their shots to New Zealand's 27 per cent.
New Zealand were in touch at the end of the first quarter, trailing by just nine points but Australia stretched their lead out to 37-22 at halftime.
As they struggled to match the Australians in rebounding, New Zealand found themselves falling further behind.
Australia punished defensive mistakes from New Zealand regularly to push the score out to 65-40 at the end of the third quarter, despite New Zealand enjoying some good play through Marino and a couple of three-pointers from Michaela Cocks in that period.
New Zealand coach Mike McHugh was satisfied with his team's performance and said the score did not reflect an improved performance by his team.
"I thought we actually played better tonight (than in the first game) - the winning margin might be bigger but when we got it back to 12 in the third quarter, I really thought we were playing basketball and once the girls play, as young as they are, they look like they are playing the game.
"We got a lot of work to do but I am encouraged by the way we played."
McHugh said defensive breakdowns were what cost New Zealand the game.
"Australia punish very quickly when you make a mistake and we have got to learn through the experience of playing in tough competition like this that you can't afford to make mistakes against players of that calibre."
New Zealand qualify for next year's Beijing Olympics by finishing Oceania runners-up but their participation has to be ratified by the New Zealand Olympic Committee.
- NZPA
