CANBERRA (Australia) - For the third straight time in the FIBA U15 Oceania Cup, Australia will face New Zealand in the winner-takes-all Final.
History
While Australia have dominated the competition, winning those two previous U15 titles and four more titles when the competition was for the U16 age group, it hasn't been a cakewalk. As a matter of fact, the games have been relatively close with Australia winning by only three points in the 2018 Final.
Australia holds the advantage in all-time head-to-head records against New Zealand (including the U16 era), but New Zealand have gotten their wins. The two teams have played against each other at least twice in each year, by the only two times the Crocs have been able to sweep the Junior Tall Blacks was in 2011 and the previous edition in 2022.
Even in this year's edition of the competition, New Zealand came close to taking the Group Phase clash before unfortunately losing in overtime.
Current Situation
There's no surprise that these two teams are stacked at the top of the statistics leaders table for teams. New Zealand have torched opponents for 110.1 points per game, with Australia just a bit behind at 103.3.
Both are the only teams to also shoot over 50 percent from the field, but New Zealand (27.5 percent) have the edge as they are knocking down three -pointers at a slightly higher rate compared to Australia (22.4 percent).
Meanwhile, The Crocs lead all teams in assists 23.3 per game, holding the edge over New Zealand's 20.0 per game. Still, both elite numbers nonetheless.
Stars
The beauty of how both these teams play is that they don't need to and actually prefer not to rely on starpower. However, if you want to look at a certain player on each squad who has displayed the tendency to erupt in scoring, you have William Hamilton for Australia and Lawson Pryor for New Zealand.
Hamilton has been consistent with scoring outputs of 17, 16, and 18 points in the first three games. He's still struggling to find his range from beyond the arc (2-13) but even then, he's been the main focus in Australia's offense.
Pryor was quietly putting up solid games before exploding for 33 points in the Semi-Finals against Tonga, where he also rained in 6 three-pointers. Pryor will have to be on point, as he probably doesn't want to be reminded of his 1-11 three-point shooting against the Crocs a few days ago.
Key Focus
Australia have allowed 78.0 points per game so far in the competition. They haven't let that get in the way of winning games, but locking it down and slowing the tempo is something they could do to better their chances against New Zealand.
John Aryang said about what the Crocs could do better: "Probably our defense. If we can lift that, it’ll be a great game."
For New Zealand, Pryor feels that cleaning up the glass will be one of the most important things to do.
"We have to rebound," he said our rebounding has been pretty poor this tournament. We have to get our rebounds and we’ll be pretty sweet."
Moreover, Pryor knows that going up against a team like Australia means that there's little room for error which is why they have to stay locked in for the full 40 minutes.
"And we have to stay together," he added."We had a patch where in that Australia game where we just weren’t together. Stay together the whole 40 minutes and I think we’ll get the job done."
FIBA