IF Gilas Pilipinas intends to bounce back from a string of recent disappointing losses, National coach Tim Cone knows it all boils down to his charges needing to rediscover their calling card—defense.
“Bottom line, we didn’t play well. We didn’t defend well. That’s really got to be our calling card. That was our calling card in Latvia,” Cone said. “That was our calling card when we played New Zealand here.
“It’s our calling card in the Asian Games, but it was really on me. I just didn’t emphasize it enough, and it showed,” he added.
Playing without 7-foot-3 big man Kai Sotto, the Philippine five wobbled to a 1-2 card in the Doha International Friendly Basketball Championship.
Gilas scored a come-from-behind 74-71 victory over Qatar in their opening match before falling to Lebanon (54-75) and Egypt (55-86).
Then, the Filipino cagers absorbed two straight losses in the third and final window of the FIBA Asia Cup qualifiers to Chinese Taipei 84-91 and New Zealand 70-87 two weeks ago.
Gilas ended with a 4-2 record, still good enough to advance to the Asia Cup set for August in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Cone admitted that failing to finish their campaign in the qualifiers on a high left a bad taste in the mouth, especially before wild and roaring Filipino crowds even on the road.
“Hopefully, we learned some lessons and moved forward that, you know, you don’t want to embarrass yourself on the international stage. That’s kind of what we did out there,” Cone said.
“Throw away the Doha games. Those games didn’t mean anything. Losing to Taiwan and then getting beat up by New Zealand. In front of home crowds, by the way, I should tell you, those crowds were crazy. Amazing crowds.”
The Philippines remained at No. 34 in the latest world rankings released by the FIBA last Saturday.
The United States kept its hold of the top spot as Serbia, Germany and France stayed in the top four, respectively. Spain crashed the top five while Canada fell one spot to No. 6.
Australia is followed by Argentina, Latvia and Lithuania—teams that protected their spots in the top 10.
For Cone, Gilas was simply a shell of itself.
“The disappointment was we didn’t play well enough for them out there,” he said. “We would have loved to. So, this is where we stand.”
A convincing campaign in the FIBA Asia Cup set in August in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia will surely erase Gilas’ bad memories lately.
