In their final game of the group stages, Australia took on Japan in Pool B at the Carioca Arena.
Looking to bounce back from the previous day’s loss to Spain, Australia came out firing: racing to a 6-0 lead and, from there, they closed out the first quarter by 14-7. With Japan’s shots not falling, the 2014 World Champions then pushed forwards to a 34-20 lead by half time.
There were just five points separating the teams in the third quarter, but once again it was Australia who earned the upper hand: entering the final 10 minutes of the game ahead by 49-30. Japan continued to battle hard, winning the final quarter by 25-19, but it was the Australia Men’s Team who took the game by 68-55.
Australian Shaun Norris said, “As we came back to the rooms last night (following Spain defeat), I wanted to make sure I was giving everything I could and for people to see that I was pushing hard and setting the tone that they were going to follow me, so, I thought it was really important just to go out there and if I made mistakes, I made mistakes, you know, the time to talk about it is over, it’s time to do it.
“We’ve been in this situation before where we’ve lost a game in the pool round match and it’s put us in a bit of a situation coming into a finals series. It’s nothing new to us, if we met them in the semis or the quarters, it’s the same scenario, we want a gold medal, we don’t want anything else.”
Full match statistics click here https://www.rio2016.com/en/paralympics/wheelchair-basketball-mens-group-a-preliminary-wb-25
