Samoa Dominate At F.I.B.A Polynesian Basketball Cup
Samoa defeated the Cook Islands in their clash on Tuesday this week.
Photo: Supplied
The Samoa Basketball team recorded their first win at the FIBA Polynesian Cup in Kaitaia NZ after a dominating performance against the Cook Islands yesterday, defeating them by 124 - 42.
Samoa shot out of the blocks with a 25-11 lead in the first quarter and were too much for the Cook Islands team to handle for the remainder of the match.
Amongst several top performers in the game, included Captain Wayne Sio, Egon Keli and Einer Thompson, and Shareef Saipaia who stood out with 27 points and 9 rebounds.
Saipaia stated after the match that, "We have built a lot of chemistry together these past few weeks, and everything I have done is on them, just really proud,” Saipaia said.
“The Cook Islands are a good team, but we just came out strong and set the tone early.”
Debuting for Samoa, Saipaia was overwhelmed by the moment and opportunity to represent his country. “It’s amazing … my Samoan family is so proud and it’s a blessing to represent my country and learn more about my culture.
I am half Lebanese and half Samoan so it’s cool to be around the boys and them teaching me and seeing how my dad was raised, it’s a blessing and I can’t thank God enough, my team and my family, especially my Mum.”
“The job isn’t done yet, we have three more games, we are going to come to every game and play how we did today – that’s the aim.
We are always going to come in humble and end humble, but we are always going to play hard and compete. This is for our family now so whoever falls, we will pick each other up,” he said.
Samoa is set to face American Samoa today in their second match of the tournament at 5:00pm local time.