BASKETBALL WORLD CUP: Dominicans enter round two

SHANGHAI: They are the joint-shortest team at the Basketball World Cup in China but the Dominican Republic are proving that size isn’t everything after winning both of their opening matches.

The Caribbean nation surged into the second round of the tournament on Tuesday with a gutsy 70-68 victory over the more fancied Germany, to go with an opening 80-76 win over Jordan.

“Maybe for a lot of people we are the tournament surprise,” said their husky-voiced Argentine coach Nestor “Che” Garcia after seeing off the Germans. “But we believe in ourselves and now we enjoy this moment. But this is only one game, this team can do more things in the World Cup.”

Their place in the next round assured, the 54-year-old Garcia and his unheralded men are now sizing up the mighty France on Thursday with Group G supremacy at stake.

The Dominicans’ tallest player is the 6ft 11in (210cm) centre Eloy Vargas and the average height of their roster is 6ft 4in, according to governing body FIBA statistics.

That makes them, along with the Philippines — twice heavy losers in China — the shortest team of the 32 at the tournament. The tallest are Serbia at an average 6ft 9in.

The Dominicans will again be staring upwards at their opponents when they face France (average 6ft 8in), but forward Ronald Roberts says what they lose in height they make up for in other ways.

“We played with a lot of energy. They couldn’t match the energy the whole game and that was the biggest thing,” said Roberts, who plays club basketball in France, after the Germany victory in Shenzhen.

There are a record 54 NBA players at the World Cup — but none represent the Dominican Republic because Garcia is without Karl-Anthony Towns, of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Philadelphia 76ers’ Al Horford. That makes the job done by Garcia — a veteran of nearly 30 years’ coaching in South America and latterly Spain — all the more commendable.

He saw the funny side following the win over Germany when, in the absence of a translator in Shenzhen, he acted as a stand-in to interpret from Spanish into English the comments of his player Victor Liz.

Meanwhile, red-hot Serbia showed they — not reigning two-time champions the United States — are the team to beat at the Basketball World Cup with a 92-77 victory over Italy to top their group.

Gregg Popovich’s Team USA were pushed to the limit on Tuesday before finally swatting aside 17th-ranked Turkey in overtime to labour into the second round in China.

Just 24 hours later Serbia showed the Americans how to do it against the Italians, ranked 13th, in a battle for supremacy in Group D with both teams having already stormed through to the next stage.

In the next round Italy and Serbia will be in a group with Spain and Puerto Rico.

Serbia were ahead at half-time against Italy in Foshan with the Sacramento Kings pair of Nemanja Bjelica and Bogdan Bogdanovic roaring to the fore.