Tall Blacks touch down in Europe 

Source: PhotosportCoach Nenad Vucinic with Kirk Penney

After almost 40 hours of travel, the Tall Blacks arrived in the Estonian capital of Tallinn ahead of the first game of their eight-game tour of Europe.

The Tall Blacks, coached by third-year head coach Nenad Vucinic, start a stretch of eight games in 12 days across four countries against Estonia on Thursday morning (4am NZ time).

With four debutants in the 2009 team and three players with 10 games or less experience at the international level, Vucinic, his assistant Chris Tupu and video technician Dillon Boucher have a tough job to quickly mold a young team.

After two games against Estonia in Tallinn and Rakvere on back-to-back nights, New Zealand head to the northern Italy town of Treviso for a four-nation tournament, with three straight games against Portugal, Italy and Canada.

They then travel north for two games versus Belgium in Kortrijk and Antwerp, then finish the tour with a one-off game against Finland in Helsinki.

"When you look at teams like Finland, Estonia, Portugal and Belgium, you don't really regard them as the highest level in the world," Vucinic said.

"But when you look at the strength of the European championship you will find that those teams can compete against the best. They've got some NBA players in their squads and they've got experience, they've been professional players for some time.

"They'll all be a challenge for us with this young team and it depends how quickly we can gel together and how quickly we can overcome the fact that we're inexperienced."

Kirk Penney, a Tall Black since 1999 and the most experienced with almost 100 internationals for New Zealand, joined the team enroute to Estonia, and forms the experienced core with Mika Vukona, Lindsay Tait, Casey Frank and Michael Fitchett.

Centre Alex Pledger and guard Corey Webster return from last year's team, while Jeremiah Trueman comes back into the Tall Blacks fold after three years away.

Junior Tall Blacks centre Rob Loe, 17, has made the immediate step up to senior international basketball, joining NBL Rookie of the Year Tom Abercrombie, Bay Hawks point guard Jarrod Kenny and Wellington Saints forward Leon Henry as the newcomers.

"It's exciting," said forward Vukona, who made his Tall Blacks debut in 2005 and has logged 54 internationals.

"It's great to see guys like Rob Loe coming in with a lot of confidence after playing so well at the under-19 world championship and Tom Abercrombie coming off a great NBL season.

"It's pretty exciting to see that New Zealand does have some young talent coming through and I'm looking forward to playing with them and seeing what they can do."

Vucinic is familiar with seven members of the Estonian squad, who played for his KML champion BC Kalev/Cramo team in Estonia, where he coaches during the northern club season.

In August, Estonia will be one of three teams playing to keep their position in Division A of the European championship, while Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Finland are among the six teams still in contention for the final spot at September's Eurobasket. Canada offer another tough challenge, with the Tall Blacks splitting two games in Canada last year.

"I'm sure we will fight to win these games," Vucinic said.

"We look at each game by itself. We just want to win every game. There are really no goals for the tour. We just want to quickly become a good team and battle to win every game."