{"id":898551,"date":"2026-09-20T05:24:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T05:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/898551\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T05:24:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T05:24:40","slug":"rollers-destroy-italy-to-claim-world-championship-illawarra-mercury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/898551\/","title":{"rendered":"Rollers destroy Italy to claim world championship | Illawarra Mercury"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TristanTristan Knowles lifts the trophy after Australia won the wheelchair basketball world championship. Photo: AP PHOTO<\/p>\n

The Australian Rollers have been crowned men’s wheelchair basketball world champions for the first time in 12 years after a commanding 81-57 win over Italy in the final.<\/p>\n

Young gun Jaylen Brown (28 points) and captain Tom O’Neill-Thorne (20) were the stars for the Rollers, who completed an unbeaten campaign in Ottawa, Canada.<\/p>\n

O’Neill-Thorne added 16 assists and seven rebounds, while Bill Latham had 12 points and seven rebounds.<\/p>\n

\"Italy'sItaly’s Gabriel Benvenuto under pressure from Australia’s Tom O’Neill-Thorne and Jaylen Brown. (AP PHOTO)<\/p>\n

The Rollers’ latest triumph adds to previous world titles in 2010 and 2014.<\/p>\n

Italy also entered the gold-medal game unbeaten but were no match for the Rollers’ intensity.<\/p>\n

Federico Carossino led the Italians with 16 points and Giovanni Papi added 13.<\/p>\n

Italy struggled to find any rhythm from beyond the arc, missing all five of their three-point attempts, in stark contrast to Australia’s more balanced offensive attack.<\/p>\n

The Rollers shot the ball at an outstanding 55 per cent from the field, including 61.5 per cent in two-point range.<\/p>\n

Brown, 21, shot at an incredible 72 per cent from the field and ended the tournament averaging almost 30 points per game.<\/p>\n

Australia out-rebounded Italy 35-25 and forced 13 turnovers while committing just nine of their own.<\/p>\n

The Rollers’ dominant performance followed a hard-fought semi-final win over Germany in overtime.<\/p>\n

Australian Associated Press<\/p>\n

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Loading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tristan Knowles lifts the trophy after Australia won the wheelchair basketball world championship. Photo: AP PHOTO The Australian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-898551","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\/898551","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=898551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}