World-class
There will be chock-full of stories and thought pieces on Gilas Pilipinas’ run in the Fiba Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Latvia.
The Filipinos ended their stint—and their bid to make it to the Paris Olympics—after a 71-60 loss on Saturday to Brazil in the capital city of Riga.
“I don’t know what to say. It’s funny we didn’t expect to be here but then when we got here we’d expect to win. So it’s painful that we didn’t especially having that halftime lead,” national coach Tim Cone said after the game.
His players, however, know they earned something from the arduous journey.
Take Kai Sotto, for example.
“I think the basketball world doesn’t give the Philippines much respect,” the 7-foot-3 big man said in an interview with the Olympic Channel.
“I think that’s our job to prove to the world [so] that teams got to respect us more,” he added. The Philippines wowed global basketball with an 89-80 upset of World No. 6 Latvia and went on to prove that such a triumph was no fluke taking a narrow 96-94 loss to No. 23-ranked Georgia just 18 hours later.
“Now we know we could compete and we know we could play with European guys,” Cone said in an earlier television interview. “It’s just a matter of putting a really good game together.” They almost did that, this time against a South American superpower ranked 12th in the world.
The Philippines took control of the first half and were up six at the break, before the Brazilians asserted themselves at the start of the third quarter to pull away.
“Them (Brazilians) going on a, what, 12-0 or 14-0 run on us to start the third quarter, was painful to watch. But there’s a reason Brazil’s 12th-ranked in the world and they proved that tonight,” Cone said.
It was actually an 18-0 run by the South Americans that had the Filipinos’ hopes of an Olympic stint caving in.
“[I]t just takes one night. You don’t show up and you lose. [S]o today we just didn’t play our best and Brazil just beat us,” said guard Dwight Ramos, a Gilas program fixture who finished with 13 points.
But it was also Ramos who earlier gave the Olympic Channel a perspective of what the team was able to do in Latvia.
“[W]e’re finally making strides, hanging tough with the teams, and beating teams we shouldn’t,” he said. “I think it’s a great feeling, and the progress we’ve been making over the years—I’m glad to be a part of it from the beginning.”
