Wellington, March 7 NZPA - The New Zealand Junior Tall Blacks completed a pleasing opening day of a pre-season basketball tournament in Melbourne with back-to-back wins.

Harbour centre Rob Loe, Wellington forward David Beck and Porirua guard Brook Ruscoe were standouts as the New Zealanders posted two wins on Saturday - a 72-49 rout of Waverley and 53-47 win over Victoria under-18.

"We accomplished everything we want to accomplish," Junior Tall Blacks head coach Kenny McFadden said.

"We scaled back our offence to work on specific things that we wanted to work on, getting easy transition baskets and some good on-ball presence creating turnovers.

"It was pretty good for the first run, the boys played pretty well. We were able to rotate everyone and give everyone a good run."

The New Zealanders were in control of their morning game early, stretching it past 20 points by halftime and cruising through the last two eight-minute quarters to win by 23 points, while they withstood a late scoring flurry from the Victorians to win by six.

"Rob Loe played very well," McFadden said. "He probably played the best he's played for the JTBs in the first game. He would have scored in the mid-20s and probably had 10-15 rebounds and had three or four dunks. He ran the lane extremely fast.

"David Beck also played really well. He would've had probably 18 points and close to 10 rebounds in the first game, and Brook Ruscoe was passing well, with double figure scoring and probably eight assists, many of those to Rob Loe in transition."

NZPA WGT cw