It would seem unfair to expect the combined forces of Pomona-Pitzer to go up against an opponent with a population of 18.6 million, its own army, and the 13th largest economy in the world, but this was exactly what happened on November 3 when the Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball team went up against the Australia Institute of Sport.

The AIS men’s team is composed of some the best teenage players in the Land Down Under. A few of these players will play Division I basketball in the United States and most of them will play in the country’s professional league, the NBL. Two recent AIS graduates now play at Georgia Tech and University of Oregon.

Although some players are as young as 16, the team has both height (Sam Harris checks in at 7’2 and Greg Vanderjagt is 6’10) and athletic ability (the highlights of the game were two rim-rattling alley-oops by 6’2 Guard Emmanuell "The Kangaroo" D’Cress.) By contrast, the Sagehens list their tallest players, Tyler Velten ‘04, and Brandon Woods ‘05, at a generous 6’8. And to put it bluntly, the only rims P-P rattled were from the bricks they were heaving. In a lopsided, poorly played contest, the final was AIS 71-Pomona-Pitzer 47.

The Sagehens are also a young team: there are no seniors on Coach Katsiaficas’ squad. The sole upperclassman, guard Justin Smith ‘03, started but shared time at guard with a number of other players. The Sagehens started Smith, two sophomores (center Velten and forward Mark Erler) and two freshmen (forward Jeff Quinn-Cane and guard Ben Kane.)

Both teams started slowly. Erler scored the first two points of the game with a jumper from the right side. But the Sagehens soon learned that points would not come that easily; eight minutes into the game, they had added only one more field goal. The Aussie defense was stifling, especially in the first half. They held P-P to a paltry .238 FG percentage in the game. P-P scored most of their points on transition, where their speed seemed to help them, but in the half-court they were entirely ineffective.

Ball handlers Erler, Kane and Kamau Norman-Terrance ’05 struggled to penetrate the Aussie defense. Inside, Velten and Quinn-Cane played tough but were unable to establish any consistent offensive attack. Erler, had the team’s high score with 12 points.

After the game, Coach Katsiaficas said that the lack of offense inside was what hurt his team the most: "Their guys were so big that it was hard for us to get anything going inside. We won’t face height like that in the regular season so I’m not too worried about our inside game in the future. I thought our guards did a decent job of penetration, but again, once they beat the first defender, they were going up against big guys." Too often, the Sagehens were forced to shoot from the perimeter, where they were unable to find their stroke.

P-P played particularly rough in the early going: at one point in the first half the Sagehens had four points, and six fouls.

From the line, the Sagehens shot a woeful 43%. In case you were wondering, Shaquille O’Neal has shot 53% over the course of his career. To their credit, however, the Sagehens played well defensively in the half court. Most of the Aussie’s points were scored in transition.

"I was happy with our half court defense," said Katsiaficas, "we could have done a better job with our transition defense, especially in the first half."

But AIS had a much more advanced inside-out game. The ability of the big men to draw defenders created open shots for their guards. At halftime, AIS held a 39-23 lead. The second half started much cleaner than the first had. The Aussies looked to put the game away early in the second half, but a P-P run brought the difference back down to fifteen.

AIS responded with a strong lay-up and a steal in the half-court for a second lay-up to put the Aussie lead back to nineteen and forced P-P to take a timeout.

With 3:26 remaining the margin was still at twenty points. Two minutes later D’Cress would add the second of his two alley-oops.

Katsiaficas knows that there is time before their first official game against Linfield College on November 16th: "We’ve got a lot of work to do. I don’t know what traits this team will take. Generically, a young team doesn’t have a lot of strengths coming into a season. What I do know is that the attitude has been right where it needs to be. These guys come into practice everyday excited to play. Without a good attitude, you can’t go anywhere."

If P-P can find their shooting stroke and establish more of an inside presence, look for them to steal a few games from more experienced SCIAC opponents. While beating an entire continent might be an impossibility for this squad, an above .500 season is not.