Game on Thursday
(Taipei Heping Basketball Gymnasium)
7 p.m. – Chinese Taipei vs Philippines
GETTING beat up by the likes of Lebanon and Egypt in the recent Doha Invitational Cup has stoked a fire in Gilas Pilipinas.
And now the Nationals are out for blood as they shift to the third and final window of the FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers.
First target on their sights is Chinese Taipei, a retooled squad gunning for payback on home ground on Thursday at the Taipei Heping Basketball Gymnasium.
“We’re trying to erase all the bad juju that happened to us in the Middle East. It was tough,” Tim Cone said on PBA Rush.
He was referring to the blowout losses they received from the Cedars (54-75) and the Pharaohs (55-86) that followed their come-from-behind 74-71 win over host Qatar recently in the run-up to the road assignment in Taipei.
“It was not a lot of fun watching teams beat us up and we knew we should have played better. But again, that is then and that’s the past and they had nothing to do with the Qualifiers or our world ranking or anything,” Mr. Cone said.
“They were truly practice games so again this (Qualifiers) 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? We’re hoping it will prime us for the Taiwan game.”
And based on how training in Taipei has been, Mr. Cone liked what he saw.
“I thought practice was really high energy. We wanted to have a positive practice. We wanted to be competing and I thought we saw that,” he said.
“And this is just not a time for us to rest. We can’t afford to rest right now. We just gotta keep pushing and moving forward. And so far, this team has been really, really good about moving forward, putting the last things behind them and just keep on battling. So we expect to come out and battle against Taiwan.”
Gilas has already secured an early ticket to the Asian meet after racking up four wins in as many outings in Group B, including 106-63 rout of the Taiwanese (1-3) in Manila a year ago.
But there are new factors in play in the 7 p.m. return match.
For the Philippines, Kai Sotto is not around to man the fort due to ACL but AJ Edu and Jamie Malonzo are now on board after bouts with injuries. For Chinese Taipei, 6-2 Mohammed Al Bachir Gadiaga and 7-foot Brandon Gilbeck are in tow to beef up the holdovers.
“We know they’re going to be a lot, lot better than what we played last time. They got a new import. They got a new coach. They got a couple new players. So we expect a much, much stiffer fight this time around but I think we’re ready for it,” said Mr. Cone. — Olmin Leyba
