Gilas still far from top form

THE 2015 Fiba Asia men’s championship started off with 16 teams divided into four groups of four teams each.

Having gone through the first round where the worst-performing team from each group was eliminated, the competition is now down to 12 teams for the second round of the preliminaries.

Gilas was expected to sweep the preliminaries considering that it was grouped with lightweights Kuwait, Hong Kong and Palestine, a first-timer in this tournament.

However they lost to a Palestine team that barely qualified, finishing third behind Lebanon and Jordan in the West Asia qualifier.

According to reports from Changsha, the loss came as a bit of a shock to the Philippine delegation there, considering that the Palestinians are not as big and tall as the Iranians or the Chinese.

The Palestinians, who won over Gilas by two points, is  being coached by Jerry Steele, an American. How they beat Gilas Pilipinas still probably puzzles many of us even after we massacred the two other teams in our bracket.

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Although Gilas accomplished their primary objective of getting past the first round, coach Tab Baldwin said they’re still far from the ideal form.

Baldwin said he expected Gilas Pilipinas to rise to the challenge and find its place in the knockout round.

“We need to do well in the second round to put ourselves in the quarterfinals. It’s all going to be tough games. We’re in a position to play these tough games.

“We have high expectations for the next round and the remainder of the tournament. We got our job cut out for us, for the coaches, for the players over the next several games. We expect to rise to that challenge,” Baldwin was quoted.

The remaining teams will be divided into two groups of six teams for the second round. Gilas Pilipinas will be in the same bracket as Iran, Japan, India, Palestine and Hong Kong. The other group is composed of China, South Korea, Qatar, Lebanon, Jordan and Kazakhstan.

The top four in each group advance to the quarterfinal round.