Tall Blacks aim to do better against Russia

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UP FOR IT: The Tall Blacks perform a haka before their world basketball championship win over France.

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If anyone thinks the New Zealand Tall Blacks are happy to just be in the last-16 at basketball's world championships, they don't know Nenad Vucinic-coached teams.

The Tall Blacks face the height of European powers Russia, second from Group C, in the first round of eliminations at the Sidan Erdem Dome in Istanbul, Turkey, tomorrow (6am NZ time) and not surprisingly, they feel they have a decent shot at an upset to reach the quarterfinals.

Stuff.co.nz will have full coverage of the Tall Blacks match tomorrow morning.

That expectation is driven by a 67-65 win over Russia two weeks ago in Zadar, Croatia - a game where leading scorer, Kirk Penney, did not score in double-digits, and followed a 13-point loss six days earlier in Maribor, Slovenia.

"We've already played Russia twice in pre-worlds games. We know them pretty well," Vucinic said from the team's hotel on the edge of the Sea of Marmara.

"They've made a lot of adjustments during this tournament but they're basically the same team we played.

"There is a bit of a feeling amongst the whole environment of this tournament that we're lucky that we have Russia in the eighth-final. Russia is a very strong team. Maybe not as strong to play as Turkey at home but we know this game is going to be the hardest game we've had so far."

Coming out of Group D, the Tall Blacks are one of seven teams going into the first knockout round with a three-game winning streak or better. Russia is another of those, having gone 4-1 in the Ankara group with their only loss - 65-56 - against undefeated tournament hosts Turkey.

"They are a very good defensive. They're great athletes and also very smart defensively and they've got one of the best coaches in the world in David Blatt. They're well drilled and they've got quality players - (Viktor) Khryapa and (Sergey) Monya, both NBA players and they've got four or five CSKA (Moscow) players, one of the top clubs in Europe.

"They play quality basketball and we know we're going to have to be very good to win. We feel we can win on the night against anybody. We have got the problem now that because we've beaten Russia once, everybody thinks now that we will beat them easily. It's not like that.

"I wouldn't put a number on it. To win I believe that we'll need to play hard but we'll have to play with some quality and we have to be smart aswell."

Tall Blacks back-up centre Casey Frank, who has made valuable contributions off the bench, said the Tall Blacks were playing much better now than in their previous meetings with Russia.

"With the two games we had against them, in the first game we played terribly bad and the other we got a win but still didn't play terribly great and can definitely make improvement.

"There's things that we think that we can do a better job of taking advantage of, and previously they probably had it better than us. From the first to the second games, we think we made improvements and looking at that second game, there's still a lot of improvement for us to make."

"We've taken a real step forward defensively and the way we fought back in the tournament, we've done a great job. We have to be fully committed now and hopefully we can keep that going."

The Russians have a strong history in big tournaments. Although they did not qualify for the last world championship in Japan, they won the 2007 EuroBasket tournament, finished ninth at the Beijing Olympics and grabbed the last automatic qualifying spot from last year's EuroBasket by finishing ninth since Blatt took over as coach.

The majority of Russia's scoring has come from their bigs - centre Sasha Kaun (2.11m), centre Timofey Mozgov (2.15m) and forward Sergey Monya (2.05m), who are all averaging around 11-12 points per game. Another big man, former NBAer Viktor Khryapa (2.06m) has yet to play in Turkey with a knee injury but Vucinic said the Tall Blacks expected him to play and were preparing for that to be the case.

"They're sort of similar to us," Frank said. "They grind it out, play really hard, play good defence and kind of wait for the other team to make mistakes and take advantage of them.

"They play really hard. They're coaching staff has them playing at a high level. They're all really similar in size. Other than the one (point guard) and five (centre), they've got a lot of two (shooting guard), three (small forward), four (power forward) players that are all big and athletic.

"To get through, at this point everyone thinks they have a chance in the eighth-finals. I don't think there's a team that comes in just happy to be there. Everybody comes in at least thinking that 'if things go well for us, we can win'.

With Russia having at least seven players over 2m (6ft 8in), how the likes of Craig Bradshaw, Pero Cameron, Frank, Alex Pledger and Beny Anthony can defend in the post, could go a long way to deciding the game. But like France, who also had a size advantage, Russia could find New Zealand's tenacious interior defence too much to break down.

Back-up Tall Blacks guard Phill Jones did not train yesterday, being troubled with a toe injury. Vucinic said Jones would not train the day before the game either but was 100 percent confident the Nelson Giant would play against Russia.

If the Tall Blacks can upset Russia, their prize later in the week would be a quarterfinal match-up against the NBA talent-laden Team USA, who meet Angola.

- © Fairfax NZ News