NZL - Vucinic brimming with confidence

MELBOURNE (FIBA Oceania championship) - New Zealand coach Nenad Vucinic has declared his team ready to challenge Commonwealth champions Australia on Tuesday.

The Tall Blacks take on the Boomers in three Test matches for the right for automatic passage to the Beijing Olympics.

Vucinic has led the side on a whistle-stop European tour ahead of their trans-Tasman encounter.

"It is a little bit about just adjusting our clocks," said the former point guard. "When we come from New Zealand to play in Europe, it's not so easy to fit exactly the schedule as we would like.

"We would like to have come a day earlier to Australia, but it wasn't possible because of the timing of the games that we managed to get here earlier.

"We arrived on Friday and our bodies are adjusting to the time difference. We're good now and we will try to get this game won."

A six-week build-up saw five wins in 14 games for the FIBA 2006 finalists, with games at home to Venezuela before trips to China, Slovenia, Croatia and matches against Belarus, Finland and Great Britain.

"The tour confirmed everything I knew about the team already," added Vucinic.

"We can play very well, usually against opposition that is better than us, regarded higher in the world anyway, and sometimes we drop to the level of the opposition if they are an average team.

"Quite frankly, we haven't played any bad teams on tour. We played good teams and some very good teams.

"It was good for us to get a lot of games and also some training time. I'm very happy with where we are at the moment.

"I think they are definitely running the plays well and we are getting open shots.

"There are no problems from that point of view. The last three or four days, we have focused on how we will defend what Australia is doing and how we will attack them as well.

"It is specific now on our game-plan against Australia."

Australia enter the contest without Andrew Bogut, Matt Nielsen, CJ Bruton and Chris Anstey, but the Serbia-born tactician refused to underestimate his rivals.

"They are without two or three good players, but they have got plenty of good players," he said.

"For the last decade, they have been one of the top nations in the world in terms of results and junior development.

"Young Patrick Mills is probably one of the most promising players in the world and he comes in as a replacement point guard. You will see he is a very good player and I do not think depth is an issue for them.

"They had a mixed bag of results like we did, like everyone else in the world in those preparation games. It's not about winning in the pre-season, it's about winning the games that count.

"I don't think they would be too concerned about the losses they had, just as we are not."

FIBA