Basketball New Zealand

Junior Tall Blacks guard Brook Ruscoe (Photosport)

Twenty-four hours later, the loss doesn’t hurt any less.

The New Zealand Junior Tall Blacks went down 90-83 to Kazakhstan on Saturday night, falling to 0-3 in group D and relegating them to the 13th-16th playoff at the FIBA U19 World Championship.

With a day off, the New Zealand juniors relaxed on Sunday, lamenting losses to Argentina, Croatia and Kazakhstan by a combined 16 points in front of sizable crowds at the North Shore Events Centre.

Guard Brook Ruscoe, who averaged 16.7 points, 4.0 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game in the preliminary round, said the players and coaches were still deeply disappointed with the latest loss but after a night of second-guessing were starting to move on.

“There were a lot of low heads and disappointment. It was very quiet,” Ruscoe said, describing the scene in the New Zealand locker room after Saturday night’s game.

“We felt like we should have won that game. It was a game that we should’ve won. There’s been a lot of hard work gone in and it doesn’t really reflect the results that we got.”

After producing back-to-back epic performances against Argentina, 66-64, and Croatia, 79-72, the JTBs expected to beat Kazakhstan to advance to the second round.

But the three-point shooting of Kazakhstan, who hit on 9-of-17 long balls, and the performances of Anton Arsenyev and Alexandr Tyutyunik sunk the Junior Tall Blacks. Arsenyev, who had just a combined eight points in Kazakhstan’s previous two games, scored a game-high 27 points, including five three-pointers.

“We just let them get hot and they got confidence and their shots got a lot easier because they were in a rhythm. Defensively we just lapsed and they got too many easy shots off. We felt like we could score but defensively we just couldn’t get stops.

“We’re just not used to this level. Back playing at home we can get shots whenever we want but here we can’t. We just haven’t had the exposure of playing these teams that much and we just need to get more of that.

“I think we showed that we can stick it at this level. We had close games against Argentina and Croatia. No-one had us competing against Croatia and Argentina. They had us losing by 30 points, so I think we showed we can compete on this world stage.”

Had the JTBs beat Kazakhstan, they would have played Australia, Spain and Canada in newly-formed group F in the second round at the North Shore Events Centre. Instead, they will meet Syria on Monday at ASB Stadium, tip-off 1.30pm, in their first classification game.

“We felt very confident. Australia is a great team and we felt like because of the rivalry that we could compete and go out and win it, and then that would give us confidence to go against Canada and Spain.

“But we can’t talk about that now.

“We’re going after 13th like it’s first place now. We just have to come out with our heads high and we have to get our leadership together and we have to go out and win these next two games.”

FIBA U19 World Championship

Monday, July 6

New Zealand Junior Tall Blacks vs Syria, 1.30pm, ASB Stadium