Romeo: Gilas learned to respect foes

Terrence Romeo. Photo by Tristan Tamayo/ INQUIRER.net

With Gilas Pilipinas winning games in dominant fashion in the 2017 Seaba Championship, Terrence Romeo noted that the team learned a valuable lesson which might come in handy for bigger tournaments ahead.

“We learned to respect the opponent because coming to every game, you have to have that,” he said in Filipino after the country booked the lone ticket to the 2017 Fiba Asia cup and the 2019 Fiba World Cup Asian qualifiers on Thursday.

The Philippines swept all its six games in the regional meet in an average winning margin of 58.7 points, one of which being a 107-point decimation of Myanmar, proving once again that it is the king of basketball in the region.

READ: Gilas deals Myanmar 107-point thumping to open Seaba

Though clearly the favorite going to the games, Romeo said that the Seaba tilt was a chance for the team to get their focus straight and not fall to the traps of overconfidence as the team refused to let go of the gas pedal regardless on who the opponent is.

“Knowing that we’re the favored team coming to the games, we needed to show that we will always give our best to win. If we relax, that’s the time we won’t learn anything and we can’t improve. So we just showed that we really wanted the wins,” he said.

But the Seaba feat is just the first step in Gilas’ journey to the World Cup, and Romeo knows that the job is about to get tougher in the coming tournaments.

“We gained confidence from this, but we can’t think about this a lot. Fiba Asia is on another level and we got to correct our mistakes so that we can improve when we prepare for those bigger tournaments,” he said. IDL