JEDDAH (Saudi Arabia) – Australia clicked from deep early and that spelled the difference as they handed Lebanon a 93-80 beating to stay perfect in the FIBA Asia Cup 2025, Friday night at the King Abdullah Sports City.<\/p>\n
The Boomers raced to a 20-4 start before finishing the opening quarter with a commanding 31-14 lead, and that was big thanks to their solid outside shooting after knocking down a quintet of threes in that stretch.<\/p>\n
They’d then add three more treys in the following period to eventually grow their lead to two decades’ worth at 58-38 entering the intermission, and their foes could only try as they struggled to pose a major threat.<\/p>\n
The Aussies have now gone 2-0 in Group A, and can finish as its no. 1 team – which merits an outright berth to the Quarter-Finals – if they could take care of business against Qatar (0-2) on Sunday at 11:00 local time.<\/p>\n
“Really happy with the win. I thought we defended well at the start, and then struggled to control them after that. Credit to them, they just keep coming at you,” offered head coach Adam Caporn.<\/p>\n
“Lebanon kept trying things and they’re difficult to deal with because they were willing to change things up. But on the other end, we did a great job moving the ball … really happy with the outcome,” he added.<\/p>\n
Jaylin Galloway finished with 18 points, 10 of which he made in the first quarter as he nailed two of the team’s triples during that stretch. The 22-year-old added 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 4 steals to his tally.<\/p>\n
Reyne Smith provided 18 points as well with 5 rebounds and 3 assists, while Jack McVeigh added 11 points as the troika bannered an offense that saw all 12 players score at least 2 points in the wire-to-wire victory.<\/p>\n
Put to naught by the loss, on the other hand, was the record night of Youssef Khayat, who reset his Asia Cup career-high with 22 points to lead the Lebanese. He also had 6 boards, 2 assists, and 2 steals.<\/p>\n
Ali Mansour tallied a 12-6-5 stat line while Karim Zeinoun and Ali Haidar chipped in 11 points apiece for a team that lost key guard Sergio El Darwich, who suffered nasal trauma mere seconds into the game.<\/p>\n
It is a tough blow to an already banged-up team, who, aside from missing star guard Wael Arakji because of a shoulder issue, has been closely monitoring his backcourt partner Amir Saoud due to an injury as well.<\/p>\n
But if ever there’s one silver lining from the defeat, it’s their strong fourth-quarter showing where they outscored the defending two-time champions, 20-9, thus making the margin more respectable.<\/p>\n
Lebanon will next face Korea (1-1) on Sunday at 18:00 local time.<\/p>\n
FIBA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JEDDAH (Saudi Arabia) – Australia clicked from deep early and that spelled the difference as they handed Lebanon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-54263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54263","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=54263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}