Gilas head coach Tim Cone is not going to settle for moral victories but will nonetheless use the FIBA OQT as experience to improve as a team over the next three to four years.
Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone didn’t hide his disappointment after they crashed out of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament by way of a 71-60 loss to Brazil in the semifinals on Saturday, July 6.
While they didn’t expect to go all the way to the penultimate stage tournament and even had return fight tickets at the end of the group phase, the Nationals certainly wanted to win the whole thing and barge into the Olympic Games Paris 2024.
That’s why this loss stung.
“It’s funny. We didn’t expect to be here but when we got here we expected to win. It’s very painful that we didn’t,” Cone said during the press conference in the aftermath of the semis loss at the Arena Riga.
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Gilas Pilipinas actually raced off to a scintillating start, even leading by as many as 12 points early in the second period and entered halftime with the advantage.
But things went downhill for the Philippine contingent in the third period, where the Marcelinho Huertas and Bruno Caboclo-led Brazil outgunned them, 24-6.
Gilas, which missed the services of injured big man Kai Sotto, struggled to recover from there.
“Huertas hurt us hard coming off ball screens and pulling up doing nice things. We just kind of panicked a little bit. We started doing a lot of 1-on-1,” Cone said.
“We weren’t moving the ball like we normally do. We just didn’t bring our best tonightStarted off strong but we just couldn’t sustain it against their physicality.”
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Despite being eliminated, Cone finds solace in the fact that they can now compete against the top-25 teams in the world after an OQT campaign that also saw them upset home team Latvia, ranked no. 6 by FIBA.
“It’s hard to talk about this after you lose but it’s a growth experience for us. It’s kinda like a “Now we know” moment. Now we know we can compete,” he said.
The next challenge for Gilas over the next three to four years is to take things to the next level.
“So how can we get that next step in which we can a little bit better and not just compete but win,” Cone added.
“We didn’t expect to be here but once we’re here we expected to win. So it’s an incredible disappointment for us. We’re not gonna jump up and down and say ‘Yey, we did our thing!’ and that everybody is proud of us. Hopefully that doesn’t get into our mindset. We need to keep pushing forward and get better.”