Basketball: Tall Ferns look for positives as US giants blow them away

By DAVID LEGGAT

United States 99 - New Zealand 47

It was your classic "quick Hon, grab the camera and get a shot of the scoreboard" moment.

One minute 30 seconds into the Tall Ferns' opening Olympic game they were 7-0 up.

No big deal ordinarily perhaps, but this time the opposition were the United States, chasing their fifth Olympic gold medal in the eighth women's Games tournament.

So this was a bit special. As it turned out, that was New Zealand's best points run in the game, the United States woke up and rolled away to a 52-point win.

But in those early stages there were signs of US eyebrows being raised as their significantly shorter, substantially less gifted opponents rattled and hummed along against multimillion-dollar talent.

Lined up against the New Zealanders were Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson, all headline acts in the American WNBA.

Leslie, from the Los Angeles Sparks, Staley of the Charlotte Sting and Swoopes of the Houston Comets, are chasing their third Olympic gold medals.

Pitched against them were players from the Launceston Tornadoes, the Sturt Sabres, the Knox Raiders of Melbourne and the Otago Breakers.

Still it took the superstars until the last four minutes of the opening quarter to get ahead at 11-10. At which point they raced away.

They won the second quarter 35-11, it was 63-24 at halftime and at one point they piled on 17 unanswered points.

The Tall Ferns' top scorer was Angela Marino with 13, while Swintayla Cash bagged the game-high 19, Swoopes got 14 and Leslie 13.

For the Tall Ferns, who are under the spotlight after the resignation of longtime Olympic selector Bruce Cameron in protest at their getting the trip to Athens, it wasn't a question of winning and losing, but what they could learn about themselves in the game.

"The aim was to get as many positives out of it as we could," Tall Ferns captain Leanne Walker told the Herald.

"We achieved that but not consistently enough." Still, there was pleasure in having caught the Americans, albeit briefly, off guard.

In a game of small pleasures for the Tall Ferns they forced the US to keep their starting five on court longer than when the teams met in Sydney four years ago, when some of the guns did not even strip for action.

That day the Americans had cruised through the game. This time, Walker pointed out, they hadn't.

She was also pleased her team-mates' heads had not dropped as the margin got wider.

"It was really good to get that one out of the way and hopefully we can build on it."

New Zealand play Korea in their second game tonight. Walker remembers the Koreans giving the Tall Ferns a 40-point belting at the last Olympics.

When they visited New Zealand for a pre-Games trip a few weeks ago the margins were two and nine points.

The mood in the camp appears brighter than a 52-point touch-up would suggest it should be.

But, as Walker pointed out, they had "just played the best in the world. That's the ultimate, isn't it".