
Great Britain Basketball performance director Chris Spice believes both the men and women are right on track in their preparations for the Olympics after a strong showing in warm-up games in Sheffield this weekend.
The men recorded back-to-back victories over Portugal - their first wins of the summer - while the women recorded a hugely encouraging win over France yesterday, having also beaten Angola and lost to world number two Australia.
"It's been a really good weekend," Spice said. "If you'd asked us beforehand what our results would be we'd be very, very happy with this.
"The men have consolidated a lot of the work they've been doing in the past few weeks, and for the girls it was a fantastic effort, playing against a world-class team in Australia and then coming back a day later to play another in France and come away with the win, that's huge for them in terms of confidence."
The women's win over France, a team ranked eighth in the world, was without question the highlight of the weekend as they came back from a 10-point deficit in the first half and then protected a narrow lead down the stretch to win 74-67.
Coach Tom Maher summed it up after the game by saying: "Two years ago nobody in basketball would have said there was a snowflake in hell's chance of that".
But despite the eye-opening nature of the result, Spice insisted he was not surprised.
"If you look out how we played in our warm-up games in the Czech Republic and Turkey, we were beating teams around the top 10 and we went one-on-one with the Czech Republic who are in the top three.
"I thought if we played well we'd give ourselves a chance, and having our experienced players back down the stretch was really big."
Guard Stef Collins believes the result shows they are now ready to make their mark in London.
"We've worked so hard and been together for two and a half months now," she said. "We're ready for the big stage now."
The men took time to find their stride in the first game against Portugal before pulling out an 83-69 victory, but looked much stronger in yesterday's 86-66 win, which featured big contributions off the bench as Kyle Johnson led all scorers with 21 points.
It had been key for confidence for Britain to put some wins on the board after a series of close defeats in their preparations so far, but Spice said those results had not shown the team's true face.
"In reality, Luol (Deng) and Pops (Mensah-Bonsu) didn't play much in Houston as we were just nursing them back in," he said.
"They'd only really had the two games against France and Spain, so from now on you'll see a different team."
Deng contributed 14 points to Sunday's win, while Mensah-Bonsu had nine points, six rebounds and five steals.
"To win like we did gives us a lot of confidence and hopefully it carries over into the other games and the Olympics," Mensah-Bonsu said.
"We have a lot of young guys on the team and this is a pretty big stage, but if they can play like this in the Olympics that will make everybody's job easier.
"I feel like we took a step in the right direction."



