Basketball: Russia too strong for Tall Blacks

The big men of Russia squeezed the life out of the New Zealand challenge at the world basketball championships at Istanbul, Turkey this morning.

In a low-scoring last 16 match, Russia won 78-56 to set up a quarterfinal meeting with arch-rivals the United States, who hammered Angola 121-66 earlier.

Russia's win was set up by two strong scoring runs 16-0 in the first half and 13-0 in the third quarter in which their three big men Sergey Monya, Timofey Mozgov and skilful centre Sasha Kaun, all over 2 metres tall, and guard Anton Ponkrashov were outstanding.

New Zealand's hopes also foundered when star shooter Kirk Penney and playmaker Mika Vukona were in foul trouble, both with four to their name early in the second half.

Penney, whose tournament scoring average per game was 25.4 points was well muzzled. He was held to 13 points until the midway in the last quarter before he added another eight points by which time it was too late.

Thomas Abercrombie was next best of the New Zealanders, shooting 13 points but nobody else got into double figures against the tough Russian defence.

New Zealand got off to a promising start to lead 9-2 early on but once Russia hit their straps to dominate the rebounds -- 13 to eight on offence and 28 to 17 on defence -- there was little the Tall Blacks could do to stem the flow of points against them.

Andrey Vorontsevich topscored for Russia with 18 points with Mozgov and Vitaly Fridzon contributing 16 and 12, respectively.

New Zealand's Kirk Penney topped all scoring in the first half with eight points while Fridzon Vitaliy led Russia with seven points.

Russia quickly found their range after their sluggish start to be just two behind, 15-13 at the end of the first quarter.

Russia became much more physical in the second-quarter frustrating the New Zealanders, who could not get off any of their shots and took the lead, pulling ahead by as much eight.

The frustration finally reached boiling point in the final minute as the game looked to get out of hand when Russian captain Sergey Monya and Mika Vukona nearly came to blows.

The tussle resulted in an unsportsmanlike foul for Monya.

Following the tussle New Zealand were able to take back some of the control over the game to be behind by just four points at half-time.

Penney was handed his fourth personal foul early in the third quarter and the situation became dimmer soon after when Vukona was also handed his fourth foul with more than five minutes remaining in the quarter.

With no Tall Blacks stepping up to fill Penney and Vukona's shoes to help stage a comeback, Russia took a 51-40 lead into the final period.

When Casey Frank was handed his fourth foul and Vukona fouled out with over seven minutes remaining, New Zealand lost their way.