NZL - Vucinic: Our young players believe they can beat Australia

MELBOURNE (FIBA Oceania Championship) - Nenad Vucinic may not sound like a typical name from downunder, but he bleeds the black and white of the New Zealand Tall Blacks.

After moving to New Zealand with his family as a teenager, Vucinic played at the Sydney Olympics, was an assistant coach in Athens and at the 2002 and 2006 FIBA World Championship, and has been head coach of his country since 2007.

In 2009 under his tutelage, the Tall Blacks stunned Australia in the FIBA Oceania Championship for just the second time, and then defeated France, Canada and Lebanon at the 2010 FIBA World Championship to make it to the second round for the third straight world championship.

For Vucinic though, the chance to lead New Zealand back to the Olympic Games is the biggest challenge of them all, and he spoke to fiba.com on the eve of the first game of the 2011 FIBA Oceania Championship in Australia.

FIBA: You've played Russia, China, Angola, Montenegro, Macedonia, Ukraine and Turkey in your warm up, going 5-4 against some good teams, are you pleased with your team's preparation?
Vucinic: It's been good. We elected to play the toughest possible schedule we could get, even though we started putting our schedule together a little bit too late because we weren't sure about the funding. So we were lucky actually that we were able to put up such a decent schedule for the preparation games. I am happy with it. The Stankovic Cup was good because we won it, but I think we even got more value out of the European games, four tough games that were very, very good for us.

FIBA: Some say Australia are now trying to play more of a European style, does that add even more benefit from those practice games against good European teams?
Vucinic: I don't know I 100% agree with that. Under Brian (Goorjian) they didn't play a European style and even under Brett (Brown) I don't think it is completely that typical European style and I am glad, I think if everyone played that style we might as well all just go to Europe! I think Australia obviously has a good coach, a good team and they have a good system, so will be tough for us.

FIBA: You lost some close games that you were in a position to win on your tour, have you been able to put a finger on why that was heading into the first game in the FIBA Oceania Championship?
Vucinic: The first game against Montenegro we had a long time without games and we weren't really prepared that well, we couldn't get any video on them. So we got behind by 15 points, we came back to the lead but didn't really have enough gas to win that game. Against Macedonia I would regard that game as probably a 15 point win for us because of the refereeing, I have never experienced anything like it in my life! Even their players and coaches were apologising for it.

Then we went to Turkey and played them in the semi-final of that tournament and didn't finish the game well, had a couple of bad turnovers to lose that game. Then we had a good win against Ukraine where we finished that game off well. We were pleased with how we went.

FIBA: You also had a bit of a scrimmage against the University of Illinois when you were in Italy that you won in a tight contest, and they threw a full court press at you forcing a lot of turnovers. Australia also like to pressure the ball, so was that a good reminder to your players about taking care of the ball?
Vucinic: It was very good for us. That was really just a scrimmage, we were training twice a day in 40 degree heat and going hard at it because it was our training camp, and then we played them in the middle of that. It was a really physical game, they got the pace up and we did cough up the ball, but I think it was more that we were very careless with the ball, a lot of unforced turnovers, so while it wasn't a proper game it was very good for us.

FIBA: Is looking after the ball one of your key messages to the players as you try to qualify for London?
Vucinic: We like to play up tempo, we like to push the pace, and when you do that you are going to have a greater chance of turning the ball over than if you play it safe. It's a balancing thing, you don't want to throw the ball away but on the other hand you don't want to be hesitant either. We just hope we are going to play good basketball, and if we turn the ball over a few times so be it, but we have to play aggressive.

FIBA: You perimeter players are very good, but there is a lot of pressure on young 216cm Alex Pledger in the middle. How have you seen his improvement this year?
Vucinic: He is getting more confidence and he is getting more experience, and those two things go together. He is a late starter, he didn't play the game until 16 or 17 years of age and it's not so easy for him to pick up the skills that he would have picked up much easier at the age of 12 or 13. But he is doing very well, and he is an intelligent guy and he works hard and he is getting more confident. He is very important for us, not only because of the size but because he is a good player.

FIBA: You also have 20 year-old Rob Loe at the centre position who was a star at the 2009 FIBA U19 World Championship in Auckland. Can we expect to see a bit of him in this series?
Vucinic: Hard to say. He only came in for the last four or five days, and that goes against him. But to his credit he has really picked things up well, picked up the system as well as you can expect from someone who hasn't been there for five weeks. But he has certainly improved, certainly gotten stronger than he was, and his attitude is much better - at the moment he is much more motivated and in a good space.

FIBA: At the other end of the scale, Mark Dickel has come out of international retirement to help steer the ship at the point guard spot, is it good to have him back on board?
Vucinic: It is, of course. He is a very important part of it, he is still a very good player. He is certainly not in his prime, he is now 35 years old, but he is still a good player. He has struggled with some injuries and he didn't really have a full training schedule with us, right now he has had six or seven days of practices so hopefully he will come into some good form for us at the right time.

FIBA: So what are the keys to shutting Australia down?
Vucinic: We have to rebound well, they are a good rebounding team. We have to control the tempo as much as we can, they have some very athletic and strong players.

Obviously Patty Mills is very fast and athletic and a very difficult player to defend, but it is a matter of balance for us - how much do we want to focus on him because they have other players who are very good as well? We'd like to make it as difficult as possible for him, but at the end of the day if he is top scorer and we win the game that is good for us.

FIBA: What about your team? Everyone knows how good Kirk Penney is, but what does the team need to do as a whole to win two of the three games and qualify for the Olympics?
Vucinic: We have got to execute offensively to win. Australia is a good defensive team, so we need to be able to be aggressive but still read what is going on out there on the court. Defensively containment is crucial, but more than that rebounding is most crucial for us.

FIBA: Final question, Mark Dickel said the young players now fully believe they can beat Australia, how does this compare to back in your early days with the New Zealand national team?
Vucinic: You cannot even compare, you cannot even compare. In those days we weren't at all confident against Australia for whatever reason, but these days we do believe that we can beat them. We do believe that by playing as a team and playing well we can beat them. But obviously they have got some high level, high class, highly paid players and that isn't for no reason.

FIBA