The United States led a small batch of teams to emerge unbeaten after the second day of the world under-19 men's basketball championship in Auckland today.
Greece, Australia and Argentina also made it two-from-two as a pecking order began to form at the 16-team tournament.
The talented US side showed why they are tournament favourites by beating a strong French outfit 71-55, the result always in hand as they took a 59-37 advantage into the final quarter.
For the second day, no American player dominated the scoring. Seth Curry led the way with just 12 points against a French side who were impressive in hammering Egypt yesterday.
The Egyptians bounced back to pip Iran 95-91 in overtime today after the scores were locked 84-84 at the fulltime buzzer.
Argentina, who were pushed very close by New Zealand last night, had no problems today in beating Kazakhstan 98-69 to go top of group D.
Greece head group A and Australia group C after hard-fought wins.
Greece only made the result safe late in their 107-98 defeat of day one giantkillers Puerto Rico, with Kostas Papanikolaou scoring 25 points, while Australia ground out an impressive 69-62 win over Spain.
Second in group C are Canada, who hammered Syria 99-53.
The top three teams from each of the four four-team pools at the end of tomorrow all advance to the second phase of the championship, which comprises two pools of six. Points from the preliminary phase are carried forward.
The two late games tonight were to feature hosts New Zealand against Croatia in group D and Lithuania facing Angola in group A.
