New Zealand produced a highly commendable effort in the Final of the FIBA U18 Asian Championship in Thailand on Saturday before going down 72-63 against Australia.
When you think only on Tuesday they were beaten 111-62 by the same team in Pool play the improvement was marked.
Max Darling top scored for New Zealand with twenty points with Kruz Perrott-Hunt and Flynn Cameron scoring 16 points apiece.
Darling averaged 13 points per game and along with James Moors (14.0ppg) and Perrott-Hunt (13.7ppg) all three featured in the top twenty scorers.
Moors top the rebounding count with 7.9 boards per game.
Cameron had a strong tournament finishing second on the assists list (5.6pg) and fifth in the steals column with 2.4 per outing.
In the shooting stats Max de Geest was the leading three-point exponent (10 from 26 at 39%), Moors was the most efficient from the free throw line (22 from 31 at 71%) and Darling the best from the field (36 from 58 at 62%).
LACEY LOWDOWN 