PORT MORESBY, July 6 – Alizee Lefranc scored 28 points to lead Tahiti to a 90-57 victory over Papua New Guinea in the teams’ first game of the Port Moresby 2015 Pacific Games basketball tournament at BSP Arena.
The 33-point first-up loss was a disappointingly large defeat for PNG who enjoyed the full backing of the home town crowd on Sunday. Lefranc shot 50 percent from the field, 80 percent from the line [8/10] and added nine rebounds in her team leading 28-point performance. Not to be outdone, her sister Oceane scored 20 points and pulled down eight rebounds of her own. PNG were led by Betty Angula’s 14 points, but she shot just 23 percent from the field and had eight turnovers in her 29 minutes of court-time. Tahiti got off to a strong start and established a 20-point lead through the first two quarters, with the teams going into halftime at 45-25. PNG made an early run in the second half on the back of a vocal crowd, but Tahiti were not going to let the lead go and closed out a 90-57 win. PNG head coach Thalo Green (USA) was disappointed with the team’s loss and pointed to his team’s 30 turnovers being the major problem. “If we turn the ball over like we did tonight, we will not have the chance to take anybody,” he said. “We plan to take one game at a time, and at this point, one point at a time because basketball is a game of momentum and once we gave the momentum away we never got it back.” In other women’s games, Nauru were soundly beaten by Guam 116-25, American Samoa deposed the Solomon Islands 80-44 and Fiji rode Letava Whippy’s team-high 29 points to a 85-40 victory over New Caledonia. GNS nc/jf Pacific Games Media
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