Gilas’ Belgrade campaign ends with a lot of questions
Gilas Pilipinas’ campaign in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) was riddled with a lot of “what ifs”.
To refresh our minds, Gilas gave Serbia one hell of a fight only to end up in a disappointing fashion against the Dominican Republic, which is a testament to the conditioning of the boys.
While coach Tab Baldwin offered no excuses after the loss to the Dominican Republic, I thought that the Gilas boys were drained and frustrated about the near win against Serbia. The fatigue factor played a crucial role in the second loss in the tournament, which ended the Philippines’ dream to barge into the basketball competitions of the long-delayed Tokyo Olympics. It was sad at the same time good that we had those results because we can work on the little things that can place Gilas over the edge. At least, we know that with this bunch of guys in our team, we have learned that we can stay with the big boys and even have the chance to win if the breaks go our way.
Angelo Kouame, in a post game interview said that he and the team were too tired in the end game as defending Boban Marianovich was draining to say the least. We just need to plug the holes, so we can get a better result when we face regional powerhouses like China, Iran, Australia or New Zealand. We know that we can stay with China and with Korea in terms of sustaining the momentum throughout the ballgame. The experience our guys are able to get in the Belgrade tournament will be invaluable. After all, our ultimate goal is to qualify for the Olympics in 2024 by way of becoming the best Asian team in the 2023 World Cup. This bunch of guys will be bannering our campaign in the World Cup and I think changing the dynamics of the team will only cause problems. We already managed to create chemistry among the players that we have in Gilas and this is how we are going to bring the fight to our opponents-to fight as a unit.
Adding PBA stars to the mix of the present Gilas would only disrupt the chemistry and will never result into something positive. If we can get the PBA players to stay for a while in training to jell, we might have a better shot at the likes of Serbia or even the South American countries.
I think we gave up too early on the game against the Dominican Republic, the Domincans really had a strong 3rd quarter and we were not able to defend well against their kick out passes to their shooters. It not did help that the Dominican shooters were finding the bottom of the net most of the time. The quarter was a 26-10 quarter in favor of the Dominicans and took the fight out of our Gilas boys. We could have gotten some scoring from Dwight Ramos, but it is not a quarantee that the outcome will be diferent. Again, that is a huge “what if” that we will not be able to answer.
At least, we have seen our defects and are now able to watch the tapes to see where the problem lies and move on to the Fiba Asia Cup this August in Jakarta. I have modest expectations in Jakarta, I see Gilas competing in the final 4 and looking to barge into the gold medal game and improve on Gilas’ showing back in 2017.