By REYNALD MAGALLON
Gilas Pilipinas head coach Chot Reyes said his team’s 21 turnovers were just too many and blamed those for the team’s heartbreaking 85-81 defeat to Lebanon early Friday, Aug. 26 in the fourth window of the FIBA World Cup Asian qualifiers in Beirut.
Still, Reyes said he was proud of Gilas’ gallant stand against the Cedars although he admitted that some of those mistakes happened at crunch time, thus hurting badly their chance to go home triumphantly after a spade of disappointing defeats.
“We knew it’s gonna be a tough game, we knew it’s gonna be difficult because we’re playing the No. 2 team in the FIBA Asia Cup playing at home so we expected that it would be a big challenge and big battle for us but I’m very proud of how my team played,” said Reyes moments after the game.
“We battled hard, we competed, unfortunately we had too many turnovers. 21 turnovers was really the big difference in this ball game,” he added.
Boasting a lineup loaded with talent with NBA star Jordan Clarkson, 7-foot-3 Kai Sotto and a bevy of PBA standouts, Gilas still came up short against the Cedars who leaned on the heroic performance of the Asia Cup MVP Wael Arakji.
Arakji pumped life to the rowdy crowd especially towards the end game, scoring the last seven points for Lebanon to put the game away.
Playing with fire and passion in its desire to end its miseries, Gilas rushed to a 17-7 lead in the opening frame in a run highlighted buzzer beaters and dunks.
But the Lebanese were not to be denied with Arajki delivering the telling blows.
Clarkson and Ramos led the scoring with 27 and 18 points while Sotto was solid with 10 points, eight rebounds and two blocks.
The turnovers were one of the few chink on the armor of Gilas – something that according to Reyes, can only be fixed with a long preparation time.
“That’s just the result of us not yet familiar with each other as we’d like to be. If we get some more time, more practice together then we should be able to address,” explained the veteran coach who only had the benefit of one week of preparation and a couple of days of full practice before the fourth window.
“But like I said I’m very happy with the way we played. We gave it our best shot, unfortunately the results didn’t come out our way.”
