Boomers coach Brett Brown hailed his team's morale-boosting 69-67 victory over France in their final Olympic warm-up match in Strasbourg.
Australia had lost its three previous warm-up games to Spain (twice) and Brazil so victory against the medal contender was particularly pleasing for Brown.
"It was a rewarding win. It was special being able to end all of the preparation with a win against a medal calibre team," Brown said.
"We didn't feel we brought that area of our style (defensive pressure) to the Brazil game and as a group we took a lot of pride trying to play the type of defence that we've predicated the program on.
"To the boys credit they came out and did a great job defensively."
San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker had the opportunity to win the game for France but missed a three-pointer on the buzzer.
Defeat would have been tough on the Australian side who were 16 points up in the third quarter.\
France drew level with a minute left on the clock before Matthew Dellavedova set up Aron Baynes who gave the visitors the lead.
France regained possession with 15 seconds on the clock, but Parker's shot hit the rim and bounced out.
Brown singled out Olympic debutant Matthew Dellavedova for his defending job on Parker, who was restricted to just six points.
"Matty was very good. We started him alongside Patty (Mills) and he played big, important minutes," Brown said.
"His contribution is part of the result, he was just very good on Tony Parker defensively and I thought he did a good job of controlling the tempo of the game during the crucial end of game moments."
Joe Ingles led the team with 16 points and five assists, while Mills (13 points), Baynes (11 points and 10 rebounds) and Andersen (10 points) also contributed to victory.
Tags: sport, basketball, olympics-summer, united-kingdom First posted July 24, 2012 11:02:01
No comments:
Post a Comment