BASKETBALL: The Australian men's team have powered to a 95-80 victory over highly-rated Serbia to continue their best start to an Olympic campaign since 1996.
The Australians followed up their opening victory over France with another gritty performance to record their second straight win and leap to the top of their pool.
It means they are likely to secure at least second position on the table and avoid hot favourites America in the same half of the play-offs draw.
Livewire Patty Mills led the way for Australia with a superb 26-point performance while Andrew Bogut was dominant on the boards, recording a game-high 12 rebounds.
Matt Dellavedova was also in scintillating form, scoring 23 points and making a game-high 13 assists.
Australia, chasing a first medal in men’s Olympic basketball, overcame a key setback in the second quarter when Bogut was hit with a double foul, the second apparently for arguing with the referee.
That took him to three personal fouls, and changed the strategy of the game, causing the Australians to use their star more sparingly than they might have wished.
But the Aussies rallied heroically to hold off a determined assault from Serbia, ranked sixth in the world, five places higher than the Australians.
Bogut drew a fourth personal foul early in the final quarter but was able to see out the game and steer the Australians to an impressive finish in which they scored 11 unanswered points in the final two minutes.
They were able to withstand everything that man-mountain Miroslav Raduljica could throw at them, but the 2.13 metre Serbian still finished with 25 points.
The final result did not do justice to how hard-fought the game was.
Australia led by three points at quarter-time, trailed by the same margin at the main break, and were a point behind heading into the final quarter after captain David Andersen nailed a late three-pointer.
Coach Andrej Lemanis could not have been happier with the team’s defence.
“Patty’s picking up full court and making their point guard’s life difficult. Delly is on (Milos) Teodosic and chasing (Bogdan) Bogdanovic and getting smacked on screens and continuing to give that effort. Then Kevin Lisch comes in and does the same thing and Joey (Ingles) as well and the intensity stays defensively,” he said.
“The ability for everyone to come in and contribute their bit to the pie is what gives you chances to be successful over the course of 40 minutes and then that translates at the other end.
“Again we share the ball, as a group we have a good understanding of who’s hot, where we need to get, what are our advantages and how we can potentially exploit those.
“Delly’s ability to read defensive coverage and systems over the course of games is really, really impressive.”
“And how many assists did he have, 13 or something crazy, and zero turnovers, that’s a pretty decent assist to turnover ratio.”
The Australians now face the top-ranked USA in two days then finish their pool matches against easier opposition in China and Venezuela.
Joe Ingles gave an idea of the confidence in the Australian side when he said: “We’ll treat it like any other game, and I think that’s again where this group is at mentally.
“We’re going out there to win the game. I think we’ve got a team that is focused on that and we believe we can do some special things in this tournament.”
Doug Conway
olympics.com.au
