MANGILAO (Guam) – Papua New Guinea have triumphed over Northern Mariana Islands after a tight tussle at the FIBA Under 15 Oceania Championship.

The men from Papua New Guinea (PNG) arrived in Guam at 4am, took the court at 2:30pm and put together an enormous team performance to overcome Northern Mariana Islands (NMI).  For some of the PNG players, it was their first time playing in a stadium on boards, but that did not derail their ambition to play team basketball, put on a show and have fun. 

For one individual, Adam Maikai, that amount of fun added up to a whopping 52 points and 18 rebounds, catapulting him to the top performer of the tournament.

“I just played how I play back home,” Maikai said.  “Our coach said to just go out there and have fun, which is what I did, I put in the effort and had fun.

As a team we just want to do the basics well and win.

 The NMI men were impressive with solid performances from Jezpher Navarro, Leonard Regalado and Christian Lucero.

Australia was once again dominant with a 131 to 24 win over Samoa in the first men’s match of the day.  After a reasonable start, Australia shut down the Samoans for the remainder of the game with a swag of Australians performing well.

Lachlan Clague was in damaging offensive form, shooting at 90 per cent across the board with support from Nash Walker who finished up with a double-double, 11 rebounds and 10 points.  Dash Daniels was also on point, finishing with 19 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists.

“I feel like I can hit the open shots, if I’m open, I’ll shoot it, I like getting in the lanes and forcing the defence to come to me and that’s where I can find open players,” Daniels commented.  For the team, Daniels said, “It is always about playing team ball and sharing the ball and getting it inside to our bigs.  Playing as one team was important, playing good defence, staying in front, and not reaching in.”

In the final game of the day, New Zealand took care of business against the host nation, Guam, 125-54.  Michael Jr Mike Bork, Noah Hernandez and Darnell Camacho all made reasonable contributions for team Guam, but New Zealand were too strong.

Merrick Rillstone was once again impressive with Hayden Jones, Lachlan Crate and Liam Cullen Van Der Hayden also putting on a show.  Troy Plumtree finished with a double-double, 12 points and 11 rebounds to be amongst the top performers of the game.

“If we spread the ball a lot more, we can do a lot more and score a lot more points,” Plumtree said about his team’s performance as they now prepare to face Australia.

“We have a lot of preparation to take on Australia, it will be a tough match up tomorrow but we will get some game play situations happening at training and try to have a bit of a sleep in and then lock in and get it done.”

Day three of the FIBA Under 15 Oceania Championship tips off at University of Guam, Calvo Field House with PNG taking on FSM at 2:30pm, New Zealand taking on Australia at 4:45pm and Samoa come up against Guam at 7pm local time.

The FIBA U15 Oceanian Championships serve as qualifiers for the FIBA U16 Asian Championships 2023 with the top two teams going through.  The FIBA U15 Oceania Championships will be hosted in Guam from November 21 to November 26 - Follow the event here

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