Hoops

World Champs: Boomers vs Slovenia 5-Sep (1am)

Agreed re the hate.

We flogged Germany, should have beaten Argentina (Gibson should not have had the shot, Barlow would have been better from the corner), beat Jordan and Angola like we were meant to.

Unfortunately we played our worst game at the most important time.

I am most disapointed in the subs. Did Brown ever change the starting 5?

I'm in agreeance with Mystro. We have a lot more depth in our ranks that many posters give us credit for. It is so easy to hate after a bad game.

Make no mistake, the Boomers under-performed against Slovenia. But please remember we had chances to beat Argentina, and despite playing below par, we had our chances to get past Serbia as well. Yes we didn't, but we got close against 2 of the world best teams.

Coach Brown could have done some things better, but so could have the individuals in our team. In reality, our best chance to win a medal at this level was always going to be in London 2012 (should we be able to get past New Zealand in the qualifiers), when the core group of players will be in their prime - including Bogut and Jawai to come into the team.

Things could be worse in that we were not that far away from missing out on progressing from the group stage - much like Germany (who are still the only team to beat Serbia) and Puerto Rico (who IMO were the biggest underperforming team in the entire WC's).

Brown wasn't the reason Australia shot the ball so poorly. As for rubbishing all your players and calling them second class, NZ has a quarter of the depth of Australia and would love to have half the guys that you are all hating on. Slovenia aren't shit and Australia played below average and got burnt, end of story.
Now lets hope the Tall Blacks can pull off a win against Russia and get through.

It is a disappointing loss, but really only for the lack of competitiveness rather than the result. We came into the tournament ranked outside the top ten. We finish outside the top ten. No real surprises there.

The World Champs are so ultra-competitive, any team can beat any other on their day. A 3-3 record is not so bad when two of those three games were winnable games against powerhouses in Argentina and Serbia. Unfortunately we couldn't get over the line in the ones that mattered, and didn't show up for the quarter finals match up.

But that would be why we are outside the top ten. Honestly, for all of our local bias, on paper the Aussie team was overmatched by any of the teams that have made their way into to top 8.

Two years to London 2010. We have a nucleus of young guys who will improve, and hopefully we can find a few more diamonds in the rough. But we will still probably be remarkably lucky to reach the top 8.

Pretty dismal showing.
On the ropes from the outset. Outgunned inside. Stagnant offense and turnovers. Recipe for disaster.
Mills disappointing, tried too hard (rushed as a result) and went solo too often. Joe Ingles hardly looked like he's been playing in Europe.
When they went into catch up mode, Slovenia picked them apart.
Back to the drawing board.

Not a good game at all for the Boomers - a very disappointing game in losing 58-87.

Compounding the defeat, it was Australia’s largest at a FIBA World Championship against an opponent not named the USA or the USSR.

Ingles and Mills top-scored for the Boomers with 13 each and Nielsen had 12.

Boomers were just 2/19 from long range and shot 41% from the field and only had a total of 5 assists for the game. Slovenia made 16/33 from long range and shot 51.9% from the field.

BA Recap: http://linky.com.au/4dzgt

It's the kind of loss that leaves you feeling hollow. FIBA doesn’t play classification games for teams eliminated from competition prior to the top eight so that's it for us.

Turkey easily accounted for France last night in the other game.