Guam edge PNG U18

By ISAAC LIRI
GUAM broke the hearts of the Papua New Guinea Under-18 women with a 57-56 defeat yesterday in their second pool match of the Oceania Basketball Championships in Suva, Fiji.
Losing two of their pool matches, the first against New Caledonia 59-20 on Monday, PNG coach Mary Elavo said they would have to look past the defeats and focus on their last match against New Zealand.
“We started off our games on a high note but towards the end, we had problems and it was lack of strength and speed,” Elavo said.
“New Caledonia was too strong for us; we thought we would beat Guam but we fell short in the end.”
In their opening game against New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea  skipper Normalisa Dobunaba led the team with eight points, while Svetlana Arthur collected a whopping 16 rebounds.
In the second match against Guam yesterday, Arthur stood up once again for PNG, recording a massive 13 points and 15  rebounds.
“The girls haven’t had a lot of games together as a team and we knew that one of our greatest challenges was facing competition as a team,” Elavo said.
“This showed in our first game against New Caledonia.
“The girls came up with so many errors, bad passes and poor ball handling,” Elavo said.
PNG face pool favourites New Zealand today.
“Regarding the game between us and New Zealand, it is going to be tough for us as we all know that Australia and New Zealand are the top teams in Oceania.
“But we will do our best and gain as much experience as possible,” she said.