Lets hope Angus didn't do too much damage to his ankle

Is Anatoly Bose playing?

Anatoly Bose (Kolesnikov) is not currently part of the Kazakhstani squad.

Brandt's ankle looked bad.

I could be wrong, but I recall the Anatoly Bose name change was for personal reasons, such as distancing himself from his father. It would've been good to see him suit up in this game.

As for the game, it's difficult to read much into it given how poorly Kazakhstan played. The Boomers pressure had a lot to do with it, causing an insane number of turnovers. Johnson again contributed with ease in limited time. He seems to deserve a place in the main rotation of a Boomers B team. Kay is very solid at this level. I can only recall one poor performance as a Boomer by Kay. McCarron and Sobey were standouts.

Hopefully Johnson keeps his spot for the game against Iran, that will give a better indicator of how he is going.

Final score?

Australia def. Kazakhstan 94-41. No point playing these games. Should be automatic qualification for Au.

These games are a bit of a chore to watch. They lack any real competitiveness and they don't even make our team look all that great. I feel like a mix between the talent differential and the lack of team's time to gel means that Australia out-talents other teams in an ugly fashion while the other team just sucks altogether. It is a bit scary to think that, individually, these players are even better than what we're seeing and that the Boomers, if they had a series of lead in games, could probably be even harder on these teams. Having said that, I don't believe this particular NBL Boomers team would qualify through Europe, which seem to have most of their top flight prospects playing right now. The Americas also have had Scola and Varejao playing among others.

I don't like these games as much as the next person - and the sheer travel schedule is quite stupid - and why they have to spread out the games so much. NZ (and Australia) just traveled a helluva long way to play 2 games.

BUT, and it's a massive but, we have to start somewhere to grow these games. What happens now will pay dividends for global basketball down the track.

I always allude to the Japan rugby example. Japan lose 145-17 to NZ in 1995, together with some heavy beatings in 2000's and ever since then they closed the gap against the rest and then beat the Springboks (then probably the 2nd best team in the world) in 2015.

If these games result in more international competition in 10-15 years time then I'm all for it.

MACDUB i agree, but theres developing japan at rugby and developing Kazakhstan at basketball. I would think having China as being competitive in basketball would come way before Borat's men.

Curtley, I remembered they had a fairly OK to good team at the FIBA World Cup in 2009.

They had one really good scorer - Alexandr Tyutyunik - haven't heard of him since.

Suspect their domestic league simply isn't a strong ground for developing players and/or they just don't have the pool of players.

Sorry I forgot to write Under 19 WC*

Didn't it turn out Tyutyunik was 22 playing in the U19s, along with a few other overagers in their team? They had a sweet shooting guard who torched NZ, but reports were he'd been playing pro in lower leagues in Europe for a number of years!