The New Zealand men's basketball team launched their Olympic Games qualifying campaign in style last night, beating Venezuela 99-73 in the first of three warm-up tests in Napier.
In a niggly and sometimes heated encounter, the Tall Blacks were never in danger of losing from the moment KirkPenney landed the first basket, and Pero Cameron and Tony Rampton followed up with three-pointers to give the home side an 8-0 lead.
They led 28-20 after the first quarter, 54-37 at halftime and 79-54 at three-quarter time before closing out the South Americans with 20 more points.
Each time the 21st-ranked visitors looked like recovering, Cameron, Phil Jones, Dillon Boucher and Penney would sink a three-pointer to set them back again.
One of the features of New Zealand's game under new coach Nenad Vucinic was the team's accuracy, both on offence and defence.
They turned over possession just once in the entire first half and were both solid and consistent on defence.
Boucher was helped off the court with just over three minutes to fulltime with a suspected ankle injury. He is expected to be fine for the second and third matches in Wellington tomorrow and Tuesday.
The 12th-ranked New Zealanders are building up for their Oceania group qualifying series against Australia next month. The winners of the three-match series will qualify for next year's Olympic Games in Beijing.
Penney topscored for New Zealand with 24 points and Venezuela's hero of the night was Hector Romero (12 points), who was involved in several off-the-ball incidents that were undetected by game officials.
"It's a good first game for us," Penney said.
The team had worked hard for the instinctive game they played which blew the Venezuelans away in the second and third quarters, they said.
"[Venezuela] play with a lot of passion and that's why they're great opponents for us in this campaign.
"There were a lot of incidents for sure ... but all in all it was a good one."
