KAITAIA (New Zealand) – Cook Islands started tournament the FIBA Polynesian Cup 2022 with a win despite a gallant effort from American Samoa while Tahiti took care of Tahiti.

In the match of the day in the women’s competition, Cook Islands held out a determined American Samoa outfit, 87-75.

American Samoa’s Mahina Hannemann-Gago, Valerie Tanuvasa and Malia Nawahine were all strong perfomers with Nawahine finishing up with 25 points while Hannemann-Gago dominated rebounds.

Zarya Poulava and Captain Keziah Lewis lifted their teams after cruising through the first half to be outscored in the third quarter.  Terai Sadler was prolific finishing the game as the leading performer on 19 points, with 10 rebounds.

“We are really happy with this win today, we have a lot of young players on our team, so it was nice to start the tournament this way,” Sadler said.

“They are a tough team, and we weren’t sure what to expect, but we have been training hard and are lucky to have such a good coach.  I’m incredibly proud of how hard the girls worked today.

“Continue to gel and get better and start to work on the little things like boxing out, long rebounds and transition in defence to put all the little things together.”

FIBA Polynesian Cup runners-up from 2018, Tahiti were too strong for Tonga in a dominate start to their tournament with Herehau Teissier, Hereiti Viriamu and Captain, Maea Lextreyt and finishing up on double points.

Following the game, Captain Lextreyt said the team fought hard to start the competition in a winning way.  “It was a good game,” Captain Lextreyt said.   We have a young team with lots of new players, so after a quarter, we got more confidence in the game, handled the pressure, and did what we had to do to win the game.”

Tonga fought back in the second half with Liesila Finau and Ana Enari leading from the front, but it was enough with the Tahitians coming away with a 46-point win, 83-37.

“Our message before the game was to have the best defence, and we tried to do this the whole game,” Tahiti Captain Lextreyt said.  “Even when we were tired, we were focused, and Tonga were tired too, so we stuck to our game plan, and it worked.”

The FIBA Polynesian Cup 2022 continues tomorrow at Puna Ora Stadium in Kaitaia, New Zealand with American Samoa up against Tahiti at 12pm and Tonga taking on Samoa at 2:30pm local time.  All games will be live streamed on the FIBA YouTube channel.

The top two teams at the Poly Cup will qualify for the 2023 Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands. The Pacific Games then serves as the official qualifier for the Oceania region to the FIBA Asia Cup Pre-Qualifiers.

FIBA