AUS/ARG – Another comprehensive win for Boomers over Argentina

MELBOURNE (2010 FIBA World Championship) - Australia made it two wins in a row over Argentina on Sunday at the Boomers World Challenge.

After routing the South Americans in Friday’s opener in Perth, the hosts 48 hours later stormed into a 53-27 lead by half-time in Melbourne and cruised to an 85-71 victory.

Argentina made the score far more respectable by outscoring the Boomers 25-8 over the last 10 minutes.

Brett Brown, the Australia coach, sounded almost excited when asked about the fourth quarter.

“It’s a fantastic learning experience that I think we can benefit from,” he said.

“We’ll go through the tape: the players know that we let ourselves down in the fourth period and it’s going to be interesting to see how they got their scores.

“We have our ideas on some things — on how they were so able to get so free. I think as much of the problem was on the offensive end where we didn’t produce, we took poor shots and I felt their pressure frustrated us.”

Australia and Argentina will meet in Group A at the FIBA World Championship in Kayseri at the end of August.

Both sides will look very different by then.

The Argentina team playing in Australia is missing all of the established national team stars that will be in Turkey with the likes of Luis Scola, Pablo Prigioni, Carlos Delfino and Fabricio Oberto joining later in the preparations.

Australia did have four Beijing Olympians in their line-up and one of them - Joe Ingles of CB Granada in Spain - had a team-high 15 points.

Two other Olympians made a big impact with Brad Newley scoring 12 points and Pat Mills pouring in 11 while also handing out five assists.

Mark Worthington, fresh off a German league title series triumph with Brose Baskets Bamberg, played less than 14 minutes and had five points.

Nathan Jawai, Luke Nevill and Alex Loughton controlled the boards for the Boomers.

Jawai had seven rebounds, Neville a game-high 11 and Loughton eight.

Carlos Schattmann of Argentina led all scorers with 24 points.

The third game in the Boomers World Challenge will be on Tuesday in Adelaide.

FIBA