By MARK REY MONTEJO
Veteran mentor Tim Cone admitted that utilizing zone defense – a tactic he wasn’t a fan of nor Gilas Pilipinas often used heading into the tournament – gave rival Georgia hellish moments.
The same tactic also enabled them to rally from a huge deficit and lost only by 2, 98-96, in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) at the Riga Arena in Latvia Thursday, July 4.
Playing on back-to-back games and against a Georgian side who was in need of a big winning margin to make it to the next round, the Nationals simply rolled with the punches after the Crusaders jump into an early 16-0 lead and eventually erected a 40-20 advantage.
From there, Gilas went on a zone defense and dared Georgia to shoot the treys which somehow worked to the Filipinos favor.
“I think it was like ‘let’s go to zone (defense). I think that was the key move when we went to the zone,” said Cone.
“I’m not really a zone guy but they were just eating us up individually. They were just isolating us by blowing by us so we had to go zone and it worked.”
Behind the zone, the Nationals slowed down the Crusaders and cut the deficit to just nine, 31-40, before going on a scoring barrage in the third quarter where they went ahead, 71-70.
But the counter for Gilas didn’t stop there, led by CJ Perez and Justin Brownlee, the Nationals engaged Georgia in the see-saw affair which the latter won by two points – not enough for the 19-point margin it needed to advance..
“They struggled with it a little and we got some confidence and then we just stuck with it the rest of the way,” the 66-year-old head coach added.
Cone also confessed that Gilas didn’t practice the pivotal “zone” which for him was astonishing as his wards utilized it spectacularly especially down the stretch.
“Like I said it was rare for me but in this kind of situation in this kind of tournament, you do what you have to do so I was really pleased we didn’t have a practice zone,” Cone continued.
“We haven’t practiced a zone since we’ve been together. We haven’t practiced it at all ever so for them to step in and play zone like that and be good it was amazing.”
“I think that we kind of got our senses back as we went along and like I said earlier the zone helped,” Cone concluded.
