The Tall Blacks have opened the latest World Cup qualifying window with a hard-fought 93-91 overtime win over Iran in the Philippines.<\/p>\n
Guard Shea Ili starred with 24 points as New Zealand dug deep in the additional time after the scores were locked together 80-80 at fulltime, with Iran having charged back into contention in the final quarter.<\/p>\n
Ili began overtime with a one-handed dunk and, along with fellow-veteran Reuben te Rangi, helped the Tall Blacks hold the upper hand over the dying stages.<\/p>\n
Coach Judd Flavell was delighted to come out on top in a game between the world No 25 and 26 ranked nations in which the lead changed nine times.<\/p>\n
“A real good international arm wrestle between two countries that have a lot to play,” Flavell said.<\/p>\n
“A real physical game. You could tell by the amount of fouls that were called in that game, and the amount of points or people stepping to the free throw line.<\/p>\n
“I’m really proud of the guys for sticking together. It could have easily tipped over but we kept our composure down to the end which was a key to the victory.”<\/p>\n
Centre Sam Mennenga scored 15 points and was a key figure in New Zealand’s rebound domination, pulling down 15.<\/p>\n
The Tall Blacks play a second game in Manila on Sunday night, against the bottom-ranked side in their six team group, Syria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tall Blacks have opened the latest World Cup qualifying window with a hard-fought 93-91 overtime win over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-583446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}