Turnovers cost Boomers: Mills

Patty Mills says the Boomers simply made too many turnovers against Brazil.

Australian Boomers guard Patty Mills says his team must take care of the ball better than they did in their opening London match against Brazil if they hope to rebound with a win against world number two Spain on Tuesday night Australian time.

The Boomers committed 19 errors against the Brazilians in their narrow 75-71 loss to open their London campaign, and Mills says they were critical.

"The turnovers are what cost us. You take those off, you cut half of their points off and that's something where we're usually stronger with the ball," said Mills.
"We'll take that into the game against Spain."

Mills said he believed the Boomers could beat Spain and his team needed to get back to their core strengths of tough defence.

"It is a tough loss because you always want to get that first game. But you take all the positives out of this game and move on to Spain and we believe we can get them," Mills said.

"If we stick to what we do well - and that's the defensive pressure and running out of that - that's how we can beat teams.

"Playing uptempo is our strength - we get steals, we get deflections, we take them (opponents) out of what they want to do. Then we run out of that into transition."

Mills said the Boomers hoped their strong fitness would play a part in helping them emerge as a medal contender as the tournament progressed.

"We're feeling great. We pride ourselves on being the fittest team here and hopefully down the later ends of the week that fitness will all come through and we'll be running the same as we did in this game," he said.