The Australian "Boomers" pushed the mighty United States team all the way in an epic group stage game in the Rio Olympics and can justifiably believe they have a shot at the gold medal.
Although Australia lost 88-98 to the reigning Olympic champions, Liam FitzGibbon of Fox Sports reporting from Rio said the Aussies "won more admirers on the world stage as they backed up impressive wins over France and Serbia with one of their greatest performances."
The Aussies led by two points early in the final quarter and the US had to pull out all stops to get the job done, led by veteran Carmelo Anthony who had 31 points including nine 3-point shots.
For the Boomers NBA star Patty Mills was phenomenal finishing with 30 points as big guns Andrew Bogut and Matthew Dellavedova stood up yet again although Bogut said he was disappointed by the result.
Mills was enormous and regretted the fact that the Boomers "had every opportunity to push that game ... we still lost the game, it doesn?t mean anything. I know people are proud of us and we?re not supposed to beat these guys ... but we believe we can beat them and we lost the game.?
Despite leaving superstars including LeBron James and Steph Curry at home, nobody was given a hope of matching it with them in Rio but an Australian side packed full of NBA talents held no fear, and it showed.
FitzGibbon reported it initially looked it could be a long night for the Boomers as Team USA came out flying, hitting back-to-back three pointers to open the scoring and dominating the boards.
The Americans hit seven first-quarter threes ? five from Anthony ? but Australia steadied in defence and began to hit the mark offensively.
Bogut was immense at both ends of the court, his first quarter highlights including a huge alley-oop dunk served up Dellavedova and a vicious block on Kyle Lowry.
The first quarter ended level at 29-29 and the cheers from the small pockets of Australian supporters in Carioca Arena grew louder as Australia built on their brilliant start in the second quarter as the outstanding Mills finished the first half with 15 points, including four three-pointers, and made some huge defensive plays as Australia limited the Olympic champions to just 34 per cent shooting accuracy in the first half.
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