Jawai shines, but Boomers lose

Despite a dominant performance from towering centre Nathan Jawai, the Boomers were easily defeated by China 74-61.

Jawai poured in 28 points to easily be the game's leading scorer and three slam dunks in the final quarter got the Aussies to within five points before the Chinese rallied to seal their second win in as many days.

The 208cm behemoth also pulled down 11 rebounds and coach Brett Brown was especially pleased with the performance.

"I'm extremely proud of these guys for clawing out of the significant hole we dug ourselves in the first quarter and the emergence of Nathan Jawai was a huge positive," Brown said.

"Nathan's been dominant in both games here and he's a legitimate low post threat that demanded double teams."

"When you think about his continued development alongside three quality bigs like Matthew Nielsen, Andrew Bogut and David Andersen it's exciting and there will be a lot less pressure on him with those guys alongside him than he got tonight."

"We shot the ball poorly from the perimeter and Nathan was our shining light in the post offensively and we used him. China, on the other hand, shot very well but overall I'm extremely proud of this young group."

The team will return on Thursday and will enjoy a 20-day break before n extended squad undergoes a six day training camp in Sydney from July 21-27.

A touring side is then selected to depart for tournaments in Argentina and Brazil (July 27 – August 10) before a pre-FIBA Oceania Championship training camp in Sydney from August 18-22.

China 74 (Wang Zhizhi 13, Li 12, Fy Zhu 8)
Australia 61 (Nathan Jawai 28, Steven Weigh 6, James Harvey 5, Oscar Foreman 5)
China wins series 2-0