The Australian men's basketball coach Brett Brown gave full credit to the Tall Blacks after the home side's record win over the Boomers in Tuesday night's second and deciding match of the Oceania Champs.
Before a frenzied capacity crowd in Wellington the largely inexperienced Tall Blacks dramatically overturned their seven-point loss in game one in Sydney on Sunday with a record 100-78 result to win the Al Ramsay trophy, and claim the top Oceania seeding for next year's world championships in Turkey.
The result was a triumph for home coach Nenad Vucinic who said no one gave them any credit or respect, thinking that with most of the older generation gone, they were easy beats.
They achieved the win on the back of an extraordinary third-quarter surge that Australia never recovered from.
