3 weeks ago
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February 20, 2025 | 2:44pm
Gilas Pilipinas' Justin Brownlee
(Facebook / Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas)
MANILA, Philippines — After a “disappointing” performance in the 2nd Doha International Cup last week, Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone remains optimistic, hoping the competition helped make the team better.
Gilas won one game and lost two in the pocket tournament last week.
After pulling off a come-from-behind win over Qatar, the Nationals lost by 21 points against Lebanon and by 31 against Egypt.
But now, the Filipinos will take on Chinese Taipei in Taiwan on Thursday evening as part of the final window of the FIBA Asia Cup qualifiers.
In a video posted by the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas on Wednesday, Cone noted that the squad “did not perform as well as we wanted to in Doha.”
“You know, anytime we're playing on the world stage against other national teams, it's very important that we win. No doubt about it. We want to represent our country well, and we want our fans back home to feel proud,” he said.
“But the bottom line was that the Doha game was a camp, a learning camp for us, a development camp for us. So as much as they were important, they weren't crucial. But now we're in the crucial part of it when we're coming here into Taiwan,” he added.
Cone said that he is hoping that their experience in Doha will make them better, as he emphasized that they “wanted it to be tough” so they could “learn from adversity.”
“We're trying to erase all the bad juju that happened to us in the Middle East. You know, it was tough. It was not a lot of fun watching teams beat us up. And we knew we should have played better, we should have been better,” he said.
“But again, that is then and that's the past. And that had nothing to do with the qualifiers or our world ranking or anything. They were truly, you know, practice games,” he added.
“So, you know, again, this is where we need to be locked in and we'll find out was that too hard for us, did it exhaust us too much for this, or did it prime us for this? And we're hoping it'll prime us into the Taiwan game.”
Gilas announced its 12-man roster on Wednesday. The team is composed of PBA stars Justin Brownlee, June Mar Fajardo, Calvin Oftana, Jamie Malonzo, Chris Newsome, Japeth Aguilar, CJ Perez and Scottie Thompson, as well as international standouts AJ Edu, Carl Tamayo, Kevin Quiambao and Dwight Ramos.
