Iran crushes S. Africa in opener of men's wheelchair basketball. [Xinhua]

Iran beat South Africa 73-62 in the opener of the men's wheelchair basketball in the National Indoor Stadium Sunday at the Beijing Paralympics.

Alireza Ahmadi scored 24 points to lead Iran past South Africa for an easy win. Other Iranian players reaching double digit points were Vahid Gholam Azad, 18 points, Morteza Gharibloo, 14, and Adel Torfi Meneshidi, 12.

Iran did obviously a better job in offense and also defense in the first match of preliminaries, limiting South African double-digit scorers to two, Richard Nortje and Nicholas Taylor in 25, 24 apiece.

The 11 points deficit disappointed South African team. "It's really disappointing. We put everything into this game. This was our must-win game that we identified. We've got some really hard games coming up and we thought if there was a team we could beat, we could beat Iran," said South African coach Vivian Sierra.

"If we could have started off with a win, I'd feel a lot better than we do, but I think my guys played well. I think our shooting let us down a little bit and there's two big men out there that just kill us."

South Africa suffered a shooting slump in the third quarter and was outshot 23-15 to slide away.

"I think we just lost our focus during halftime. In the third quarter, we just were not thinking about basketball," said South African forward Richard Nortje.

"We made a bit of comeback, but it was too little, too late. I think we need to identify the scorers and put pressure on them. We need to stop the big guys," added the top scorer of the game.

"The third quarter really let us down. The whole team has identified the third as a critical point for us in terms of performance and something we really need to focus on. Once you're down in a hole like that, it's really hard to get out of it. We just didn't perform like we'd liked," said South African guard Nicholas Taylor.

There are 12 teams divided into two pools at the Paralympics. The top four teams in each pool after round-robin matches advance to the eliminations.

Iran crushes S. Africa in opener of men's wheelchair basketball. [Xinhua]

(Xinhua News Agency September 7, 2008)