By REYNALD MAGALLON
Overachieving expectations and then falling when they started hoping that they could actually do it surely stings not just for head coach Tim Cone and the rest of Gilas Pilipinas.
But if there’s one thing that the Nationals could take away from the impressive FIBA Olympic Qualifying tournament run, it was the fact that they can now proudly say they can compete against the best in the world.
The No. 37 Filipinos were thrusted into the fire against three top 25 teams in the world – claiming the scalp of No.6 Latvia, advancing to the semis after a narrow loss to No.23 Georgia and leading by as many as 12 before collapsing against No.12 Brazil.
In that run, Gilas picked up its first win in OQT after three times it participated in such a tournament, advanced to the OQT semis when no one expected and more importantly, ended a 64-year record of futility against European teams.
“It’s a growth experience for us,” Cone described Gilas run.
“It’s kinda like ‘now we know’ moment. Now we know we can compete so how can we get to that next step in which we can get a little better and not just compete but win,” he added.
Cone, however, stressed that a loss is still a loss, a win is a win and there were simply no moral victories in between.
“We try to tell ourselves almost is not good enough, almost winning, almost getting there, it’s not good enough. We have to find a way to get over the hump and get there and tonight we didn’t do that,” he added.
Knowing full well how proud they made their fans with their improbable run, Cone is hoping that they won’t get into their mindset and just settle to where they are right now.
“Like I said, we are not expected to be here but once we’re here, we expected to win so it’s an incredible disappointment for us and we’re not gonna jump up and down and say we did our thing and everybody was proud of us,” said Cone
“Hopefully that’s not getting into our mindset. We need to keep pushing and moving forward, getting better,” he added.
