Gilas Pilipinas forward Japeth Aguilar slams one home in a game against Qatar in the Fiba Asia Cup.
fiba.com
Gilas Pilipinas coach Chot Reyes tells team to finish stronger in coming knockout stages
A huge number of OFWs celebrated with Gilas Pilipinas on Sunday night after the Filipinos topped Group B in the Fiba Asia Cup and advanced to the quarterfinals outright.
But coach Chot Reyes was quick to remind his gung-ho wards that playing the way they did in a narrow 80-74 win over rugged Qatar, that they won’t be able to get the job done when they clash with either Japan or many-time nemesis South Korea in the first round of the KO stages on Wednesday night.
“You all know that had we played Korea or Japan tonight, we would be headed home,” Reyes told his players after they almost blew a 17-point lead and had to withstand a furious finish by the Qataris behind guard Mansour Elhadary.
“No way we’ll win like that,” Reyes was quoted in a story sent by the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas, which is providing details of Gilas games with no Philippine-based publication sent to Beirut in Lebanon.
Using speed yet again to win a third straight game with the Filipinos playing without big men Christian Standhardinger and June Mar Fajardo, Gilas took command early and then had a crucial cold spell in the fourth that had the Qataris threatening.
Matthew Wright and Terrence Romeo quelled the last of those uprisings with timely hits from the outside. Wright finished with 25 points built around seven triples, while Romeo made his only two field goals of the night inside the final three minutes.
Meanwhile, Standhardinger, according to a report by TV5’s Jutt Sulit, will play on Wednesday “pain or no pain” as the Filipinos await the winner of the Korea-Japan match to be played at 11:30 p.m. (Manila time) on Monday.
“No matter what, pain or no pain, I will play on Wednesday when it really counts,” said the 6-foot-7 Filipino-German, who sat out his first game in two tournaments with Gilas because of a severe stiff neck and sore shoulder.
Standhardinger, who is averaging 15.5 points and 6.5 rebounds, said that the injury came after a rugged win over Iraq, when “somebody hit me in the back and I heard it pop.”
Korea has a history of inflicting a lot of heart-rending defeats on the Filipinos and they actually own a win the last time the two countries met very recently in the Jones Cup in Taipei.
That game had the Philippines making just 1-for-26 from three-point distance in an 83-72 defeat that took the Filipinos out of the title hunt in Taipei.
Gilas didn’t shoot that bad against Qatar, but it had 17 turnovers and couldn’t play defense the way it could as Elhadary got away with 23 points and almost won it by himself in the endgame.
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