NO QUITTING
Gilas Olympic dream remains blazing despite foiled Paris bid
Fate played a cruel trick on Gilas Pilipinas in its FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) campaign.
It lifted the Filipinos cagers into cloud nine with an unexpected dominating win over a European powerhouse 31 places higher than their world ranking in the competition opener.
But when Gilas came just two steps from claiming a spot in the Paris Olympics, it shut the door right in its face last Saturday in a stinging 60-71 loss to world No. 12 Brazil in the semifinal.
Despite the heartbreaking end to a fairytale journey in Riga, Latvia, Gilas head coach Tim Cone is hopeful that the pain of missing the Summer Games slated to begin on 26 July will serve as motivation for the team’s mission of qualifying in the 2028 Los Angeles edition.
“It’s hard to talk about this right after you lose. But it’s a growth experience for us. It’s kind of like a ‘now, we know’ moment. Now, we know we can compete. How can we get that next step in which we can get a little bit better and not just compete, but win,” said Cone after Gilas failed to end a 52-year Olympic absence.
Gilas came into the OQT with modest expectations of giving their more experienced and favored rivals some decent competition.
In Cone’s words, Gilas wasn’t even supposed to make it past the group stage.
But the 37th ranked Gilas shocked the world when it pulled off the biggest upset in the tournament by beating world No. 6 Latvia, 89-80, in a game that saw the Filipinos lead by as many as 26.
Gilas despite losing center Kai Sotto in the second quarter rallied from 20 points down before eventually falling to Georgia, 94-96, but was enough to bring the team to the semis for a faceoff against the Brazilians.
“Playing these kinds of tournaments where you are playing three games in four days, it gets harder and harder every game. These are the things that we will need to adjust to. But like I said, we didn’t expect to be here. Once we are here, we expected to win,” Cone said.
“It’s an incredible disappointment for us. We are not going to jump up and down and say ‘Yehey, we did our thing and everybody was proud of us,’” he added.
“Hopefully, it doesn’t get into our mindset. We need to keep pushing and moving forward, getting better.”
Second half meltdown
Gilas looked poised to walk away with another upset when it took an 11-point lead in the second quarter sans Sotto, who was sidelined with a bruised rib he sustained against Georgia. The Philippines even took a 33-27 lead at halftime. Then things turned sour.
Brazil kept Gilas scoreless for more than five minutes in the third period — nine including the last three minutes of the second quarter. The Brazilians outscored Gilas, 24-6, in the third canto as they went into the fourth with a 51-39 advantage.
Gilas did not recover after.
“It’s funny we didn’t expect to be here but then when we got here, we expect to win so it’s painful that we didn’t. Especially after having a halftime lead and coming out and I think going on a 12-0 or 14-0 run on us to start the third quarter was painful to watch,” Cone said.
“But there’s a reason why Brazil is the 12th-ranked team in the world and they proved it tonight.”
‘It’s hard to talk about this right after you lose. But it’s a growth experience for us.’
Brazil big man Bruno Caboclo finished with 15 points while veteran Marcelinho Huertas also had 13 markers including crucial baskets that kept Gilas at bay in the fourth period to set a final date against Latvia, which defeated Cameroon in the other semis pairing.
“We don’t want to make excuses but losing Kai was big for us because it just took away our depth in the frontline. It forced June Mar Fajardo to have overplay minutes and that kind of all mushroomed it right there. But the bottom line is we just weren’t good enough today,” Cone said.
Brazil made life difficult for Gilas naturalized player Justin Brownlee as he scored 15 points of a terrible 5-of-16 field goal shooting after averaging 27 points in the first two games.
Dwight Ramos had 13 while Fajardo, who had 11 rebounds, and CJ Perez added 10 each.
Bright future
Cone hopes what Gilas achieved in the OQT will boost the national team’s program for future tournaments including the 2027 World Cup in Qatar.
“The whole part of bringing this particular program together, which is different from what we had in the World Cup, is the fact that we are hopefully going to keep these guys together for the next three to four years, try to keep them together going into the next World Cup,” Cone said.
The Philippines as host, got an outright spot in the World Cup last year but will need to go through the qualifiers for the 2027 edition.