By REYNALD MAGALLON
While Gilas Pilipinas has been vocal about liking its chances against the teams in its group in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying tournament, the team never really expected to go deep and in fact already has plane tickets to fly back home after the game against Georgia.
But the Nationals are not using any tickets at this point apart from the one that leads them to the semifinals after keeping their second spot in the Group A standings after a 96-94 loss to Georgia.
“Well we have our tickets to leave tomorrow so we already have our tickets reservations to go and probably buy all the tickets tomorrow so I guess we have to move them back a little bit. That’s how surprising we are to be here and talk to you guys,” said Gilas head coach Tim Cone after the game.
Hopes actually looked bleak for Gilas at the start of the contest when the Crusaders jumped into a blistering 16-0 start and even took a 40-20 lead – more than the 19 points supposed winning margin Georgia should have to eliminate Gilas.
But the Filipinos showed resilience, something that Cone couldn’t help but praise.
“We’ve been saying it’s the first time I felt good about losing and I just want to compliment our guys. They went down 20 and that would be easy panic time. They worked their way back into the game,” Cone said.
“One little streak there and we could have one down 30 and we’re going home and we’ll be using that tickets that we have tomorrow but they really showed resilience,” whose wards also had to overcome the absence of 7-foot-3 big man Kai Sotto who went down with an injury in the second frame.
Justin Brownlee did what he does best and carried Gilas on his shoulders with 28 points, eight rebounds and eight assists while Dwight Ramos, Chris Newsome and CJ Perez all stepped up and not only trimmed the deficit down but even put the team in position to even actually win it.
Gilas actually had the chance to send the game to overtime and try to win it to seize the top spot of Group A but Cone decided otherwise and chose not to let Georgia get an opportunity to further pad the lead in the extra period.
“We could go to overtime. We have the opportunity to shoot the trey and try to get into the overtime and play but we just felt we didn’t want to give them the opportunity to try and extend the lead in overtime,” shared Cone.
Georgia did try to force the OT as Goga Bitadze tried to put the ball back on his own goal after the botched free throw from Newsome but missed it completely.
“I should have had Newsome just hold the ball and not shoot the free throw and take the violation. That would have been a smart move but I didn’t think about it. We were lucky we didn’t go to overtime,” Cone commented.
