SEREMBAN (Malaysia) – Tonga secured a seventh-place finish in Division B of the FIBA U16 Women’s Asia Cup 2025 after downing Samoa, 67-60, in the Final Phase opener Wednesday at the Karisma Arena.<\/p>\n
Ruby Cutbush struck the dagger from beyond the arc for the 65-58 lead with 1:36 remaining and that ultimately enabled the crew to repel their hard-fighting foes once and for all – and end their campaign on a high.<\/p>\n
In their very first stint in the biennial youth competition, the Tongans concluded as much with back-to-back wins while sending their counterparts home empty-handed as they dropped all of their four assignments.<\/p>\n
Cutbush led Team Tonga with 17 points, spiked by a 5-of-8 clip from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n
Vahanoa Wolfgramm delivered 14 points and 6 rebounds off the bench, while Huni Folau produced 12 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists, and 8 steals as the two were also crucial in putting the game out of reach.<\/p>\n
Tonga held a slim one-point lead approaching the last three minutes but Wolfgramm scored from close range before Folau split her shots from the free throw line to make it a 62-58 gap with 2:06 to spare.<\/p>\n
And then came Cutbush’s all-important trifecta from the wing, sparking a celebration of sorts over at the team’s bench as that shot took the wind out of Team Samoa’s sails as they went on to take the victory.<\/p>\n
Samoa were led by Marley Sialeipata with 18 points and 8 rebounds in the stinging defeat. Levani Muliaumasealii supplied 12 points and 10 rebounds, while Adelaide Filemu made 11 points and 6 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Jalyn Newton Taito made 10 points, including the three that gave themselves the 46-43 lead late in the third quarter which they could not sustain, ultimately losing steam entering the home stretch.<\/p>\n
FIBA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEREMBAN (Malaysia) – Tonga secured a seventh-place finish in Division B of the FIBA U16 Women’s Asia Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-149378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}