KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's Olympic men's basketball hopes have been blitzed 75-48 by Greece in Athens this morning (NZ time).
Spurred on by a raucous crowd of 20,000 at the Olympic qualifying tournament quarterfinal, Greece were too classy in every department for a Tall Blacks side whose hopes of reaching
the Beijing Games next month rested on a top-three finish.
It is the first time since 1996 that New Zealand won't field a men's basketball team at the Olympics.
A Tall Blacks side missing several unavailable or retired senior players always faced a daunting task against the tournament favourites and world championship silver medalists.
They were never in the hunt after a disastrous first five minutes in which they fell behind 15-2 and veteran forward Pero Cameron picked up two fouls.
The lead was pegged to 22-12 by quarter time but New Zealand steadily lost ground from from there, trailing 20-37 at halftime and 36-55 with a quarter to play.
A gulf in class was evident at both ends of the court, particularly when the Tall Blacks were in possession.
They struggled to penetrate, nor to find any easy shots under the basket which reduced them to a reliance on three-point shooting. Of their 46 shots from the field, 28 were from beyond the arc and they were only successful with six of them.
The much taller Greeks were comfortable from close range, where they landed nearly 60 per cent of their shots, while winning the rebound battle 41-27.
No Tall Black could reach double figures, with Lindsay Tait scoring nine points and three players contributing eight - Kirk Penney, Mika Vukona and Cameron.
Penney was the tournament's leading scorer before today, averaging 27, but he was cold from the start against opponents who applied plenty of heat to his shot and he managed just one three-point shot from 11 attempts.
Coach Nenad Vucinic was disappointed their Olympic dream had ended but couldn't fault the attitude of his inexperienced team.
"If you saw the game you would have been proud," he said.
"They never really dominated us that much although the scoreline doesn't really show that.
"For us they (Greece) are a very difficult team, they're a classy team, they're well coached. They're a powerhouse team of world basketball.
"But we didn't give them anything easy the whole game."
While a top-three finish was always a major challenge, particularly given their quarterfinal draw, the New Zealanders always felt their were a chance to reach Beijing.
"It was always going to be a tough game today but even then we believed that if we played as hard as we could, then we would have a chance. We were very determined but the shooting let us down a little bit there's not much you can do about it."
Vucinic admitted it was a disappointing return for Penney but said he had come up trumps as a scoring leader in most of their matches this year.
"He kept playing hard for the team. It was very difficult to get open shots b& you have to give credit to their defence."
It was a consummate team performance from Greece, whose guards Vassilis Spanoulis and Dimitris Diamantidis top-scored with 14 and 11 points respectively.
Their semifinal will be against Puerto Rico after they upset Slovenia 80-71 today.
The other quarterfinal results saw Germany down Brazil 78-65 and Croatia crush Canada 83-62.
- NZPA
