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England 94 - 62 New Zealand (78247)

Given New Zealand beat us in a scrimmage towards the end of last season (with the current squads we have), I was expecting a tough game playing them away, which wasn't the case. First half our offence struggled to get going, but when it did in the 2nd half it was game over pretty quickly.

Given New Zealand already had 3 losses, it was a game they needed to win to hold any hope of reaching the knockout rounds, so I expected them to go with more effort, but I held confidence that with a correct prediction we would be strong enough to still win, which showed to be correct.

The win now puts us at 6-0 with a healthy +226 PD, which has us 2nd in the table as it stands, only 2 points behind Estonia. But we now face 2 tough challenges against Croatia at home (5-1) and Estonia away (6-0), so maintaining our unbeaten qualification record may not be possible, but hopefully we can continue to be competitive and achieve a home tie for the knockout rounds.

England 78-67 Croatia (78277)

A strong win for us against the 18th ranked Croatia puts us at 7-0, and guarantees that we will have at least 1 home game in the knockout phase, which is a big advantage to have. I opted to go with more effort in this game as I believe having home court advantage in the knockouts is more beneficial than having the higher enthusiasm. As with all our games this season, it was our defence that held firm and gave us the opportunity to win. Only 2 teams have scored more than 70 points against us so far this season, Columbia who scored 71 and Costa Rica who scored 77 (this was RNG vs RNG so was naturally a higher scoring game). If we can continue to hold teams to less than 70 points we have a chance to win any game.

We next face another unbeaten team in Estonia, who currently sit at the top of the standings and are +30 PD better than every other team. Their team this season looks to be incredibly strong. I doubt we will be able to maintain our unbeaten record, but wee in a position to still finish with a good seed for the knockouts