Defending Australian national basketball League champions the Perth Wildcats have crushed the New Zealand Breakers 101-78 with a dominant defensive display in game one of their playoff series in Auckland.
Adding injury to insult for the Breakers, who were the league's best regular season team, they lost star forward Mika Vukona to a knee injury early in the first half.
The Breakers travel to Perth for Sunday's second encounter, where they were beaten by 40 points in their last match.
Thursday night's match was level at half-time before the visitors ran away with it in the second half.
The Breakers were plagued by turnovers, losing the ball 17 times.
Kevin Lisch top scored for Perth with 29 points, while Tom Abercrombie had 17, Gary Wilkinson 16 and Kirk Penney 14 for the Breakers.
Breakers veteran CJ Bruton says nothing fell for them and in a series like this you know there's another game coming, and it's coming pretty quick, so they've got to let it go and move on.
