Awesome Ili not enough as Tall Blacks fall short

While Melbourne United’s Boomers stars are set to progress to the Second Round of the FIBA World Cup, Shea Ili and Flynn Cameron’s New Zealand squad have come up just short, losing their final group play game against Greece.

After leading for much of the game, a late run from the European powerhouse was too much to withstand for the Tall Blacks.

Despite the loss, Shea Ili was spectacular, finishing with the equal most points in the game (27) while dishing out eight assists and pulling down five rebounds.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="tl" dir="ltr">Shea Ili got no Papa issues. ?<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FIBAWC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FIBAWC</a> x <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WinForAll?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WinForAll</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZhyonpsoES">pic.twitter.com/ZhyonpsoES</a></p>&mdash; FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 ? (@FIBAWC) <a href="https://twitter.com/FIBAWC/status/1696877845895639314?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 30, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Flynn Cameron also impressed in limited minutes, playing hard-nosed defence and coming away with the sky-scraping block.

The duo will next play a final classification games against Mexico tonight from 6:45pm and Egypt on Saturday from 6:45pm.