Cairns games for U18s

THE Papua New Guinea Under-18 men’s national basketball team will head to Australia this weekend to play exhibition games against selected Cairns representative line-ups.
PNG will face the Cairns Stingers U18 side at 4.30pm on Sunday afternoon, before taking on with the Cairns Marlins U18 squad at 5pm on Monday.
Along with the two games, the team would have a series of training sessions and would also attend the Cairns Taipans-Illawarra Hawks National Basketball League (NBL) game at the Cairns Convention Centre tomorrow evening.
Basketball Federation of Papua New Guinea (BFPNG) chief executive officer Joel Khalu, who is also the team’s head coach, said everybody was excited about the four-day tour of Far North Queensland.
“For 10 of our 12 players, this will be the first time they’ve actually travelled overseas, so as you’d expect, they’re all pretty pumped,” Khalu said.
“It’s going to be a great learning curve for them, especially playing against a different style of basketball to what they’re normally accustomed to here in PNG.
“Both Cairns sides are extremely talented and have Queensland State junior representative players on their rosters, so the games are going to present us with massive challenges.
“The Marlins outfit possess an athlete who represented Australia at the FIBA U17 World Championships in Spain last year, so it will be fun to see our guys matchup against a player of that calibre,” he said.
“Hopefully this would be the first of many international basketball tours that these junior players have throughout their careers.”
BFPNG acknowledged the support from sponsors whose contributions made the trip possible.
“We thank our sponsors, in particular, the iPi Group and Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited, who through their generosity, made our proposed tour become a reality,” Khalu added.
The PNG U18s will face the Papuan Blacks V2 in their final preparation game this afternoon at 4pm at the Taurama Aquatic Centre.