The Tall Blacks were beaten on the buzzer by Croatia in Slavonski Brod tonight but can hold their heads high on the back of a fiercely determined performance that pushed the world number 12 to a final shot in their home gym.
On a sweltering night that made any time in the sauna-like dressing rooms unbearable, the Tall Blacks went shot for shot with their more vaunted rivals, at times silencing the vocal home crowd with their tenacity against a much bigger opponent, but it was the home side who had the last laugh, on the back of a three that hit nothing but net from Rok Stpicevic.
Head coach Paul Henare was proud of his team and despite the loss, got plenty from the game.
“I am proud of those players right now, we are disappointed at the loss, we should all be disappointed at the loss but we will take plenty from this performance as well. This is a tough place to play, we knew that, we wanted that, and Croatia gave us all we expected. They are big, strong and a real presence, this was the perfect work out for us at this stage of our preparation for the Australians.”
Henare was also conscious of the testing schedule his side faces, with Slovenia next inside 24 hours (and after a 4 hour bus trip), not running some of his leading players for as many minutes as they might otherwise expect.
“We went out there to get this win tonight, that was our priority, we spoke about it, we wanted it, we put it all on the line. But the long game is Australia and the Oceania Series and a place at the Olympic Games and we play Slovenia tomorrow night in Zrece so yeah, we were perhaps conscious of that workload in regards minutes played.
“But this team is deep and will rely on everyone stepping up at crucial times to get the job done, we saw that tonight. Effort areas were big for us, we lost the rebounding count by one against a much bigger team and our second highest contributor was a guard (Tait with 5). I cannot fault our effort and our commitment to each other tonight, we just didn’t quite have it in us on that final play.”
While Croatia led through most of the match, it was never comfortable and in the closing minutes the Tall Blacks made their run that so nearly saw them take the match. Corey Webster made a four point play to bring the margin back to 5 points with four minutes to play. Pressure defence forced turnovers, another Webster basket and then with 20 seconds to play captain Vukona grabbed his 9th rebound for a put-back two and the Tall Blacks had the lead.
But Croatia somehow overcame another strong defensive set from the Tall Blacks to set up the open look for Stipcevic and the crowd could at last cheer their team with some level of comfort, knowing the game was won as the buzzer sounded simultaneous as the ball went through the hoop.
In a game that saw the effort spread Webster stood out offensively with a game leading 19 and had great support from the bigs with Vukona (10pts, 9boards), Loe (9pts, 4 boards) and Fotu (9pts).
Tom Abercrombie felt the full force of the Croatian muscle, coming down from on high and landing awkwardly, avoiding a serious injury but copping a cut to the chin that required 3 stitches before he returned to the game. Shea Ili made a good fist of his debut, the point guard did not contribute hugely on the stat sheet but will have grown enormously from his involvement in such a game played at a white hot pace.
Croatia 70 Stipcevic 14, Ukic 11, Bilan 11 Tall Blacks 68 Webster 19, Vukona 10, Loe 9, Fotu 9
