Gilas’ Doha trip designed to get feel of action at FIBA Asia Cup

THERE were hard lessons learned from the Qatar trip that Gilas Pilipinas hopes will serve it well moving forward.

The Nationals absorbed two blowout losses to Lebanon (54-75) and Egypt (55-86) and would have gone winless in the Doha Invitational Cup if not for a come-from-behind 74-71 opening victory over host Qatar.

“Bottom line is, we were not happy with our play,” coach Tim Cone told The STAR as he assessed the team’s performance against three tough Arab teams in three consecutive nights.

“We maybe bit off more than we could chew with this Doha trip. We didn’t respond well to the adversity of the long trip and the three games in a row. We were sluggish throughout and our usual ball movement was lacking.”

But Mr. Cone stressed this Middle East gig was designed to enable the Philippine squad to get a feel of what awaits in the FIBA Asia Cup to be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in August.

And in this aspect, it was productive.

“We did achieve the goal of playing the Middle Eastern teams and seeing the problems they present. They were physical and we’ll need to adjust to that physicality in the future. We wanted this trip to be hard and perhaps it was a little harder than we anticipated,” he said.

After the Doha trip, the Nationals returned to Manila on Monday night for an overnight “homecoming.” Then on Tuesday, Justin Brownlee and Co. packed their bags again, this time heading to Chinese Taipei for their road assignment in the third window of the FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers. The unbeaten Filipinos shoot for Win No. 5 against the Taiwanese (1-3) on Thursday night in the continuation of Group B hostilities. From Taipei, they fly to New Zealand afterward for what’s expected to be a grudge match against the Tall Blacks (3-1) on Sunday in Auckland.

“Now we move on to the real games, the ones that count. We’ll see if this experience (in Doha) helped us for our window,” said Mr. Cone.

Gilas, which is grappling with the absence of injured Kai Sotto, received a frontline boost with veteran Japeth Aguilar rejoining the team for Qualifiers after missing the Qatar trip.

“Japeth is on the trip to Taiwan,” said Mr. Cone. — Olmin Leyba