Douthit to play in pain tonight

Marcus Douthit is in pain after banging up his right shin pretty badly.

And it only became worse when Gilas Pilipinas coach Chot Reyes utilized him for extended minutes against scrappy Hong Kong on Wednesday night.

“It started to hurt a lot again. Hopefully, I can get a lot of rest and I’m not going to practice,” said the 6-foot-10 hard-nosed center who hurt his shin during Gilas’ victory over Qatar in the second round of the group stages on Tuesday.

“It’s painful but hopefully a day of rest will heal it up a lot better.”

The Fiba Asia championship took a break yesterday as the eight surviving teams seeking three slots to the 2014 Fiba World Cup brace for the knockout stages beginning with today’s quarterfinals.

“I wasn’t supposed to play a lot of minutes. But the game was ugly, so I played more than I expected. Coach told me to just go out there and see how it feels, and take five to 10 minutes max,” said Douthit.

The Nationals, however, struggled all night against Hong Kong, forcing Reyes to keep his ailing leader on the floor for almost 32 minutes.

“The way the game was going, I played the whole game,” said Douthit.

Gilas faces Kazakhstan in today’s round-of-eight with the winner advancing to  the semifinals against either South Korea or Qatar.

“Their big guys can shoot the ball. They crash the boards well and they got a great point guard,” said Douthit.

“But as long as we can take their big guys out of their game and we beat them up down the court, we should be all right,” he added.