Gilas guns for 7th place against lowly Mongolia

INQUIRER PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA

INCHEON, South Korea—Having sunk to depths never before plumbed, Gilas Pilipinas tries to stay away from going even deeper.

Driven to its knees at the 17th Asian Games here, Gilas Pilipinas tries to exit with at least a victory Wednesday when it faces Mongolia in a classification-round game for seventh place.

“You obviously want to get a win,” said swingman Gabe Norwood of the game that kicks off 3:15 p.m (2:15 p.m. in Manila) at faraway Hwaseong Sports Complex gymnasium.

“You want to finish this tournament on a high note.”

It doesn’t feel like a high note, though, even if the Filipinos manage to win. A win will give the Philippines a final position in the Asian Games rankings that it has never set foot on before.

Previously, the Philippines’ worst finish was a pair of sixth-placers, in 1966 and in 2010, and on both occasions, the country fielded in amateurs to the tournament.

The 2010 squad, though, had naturalized center Marcus Douthit and a handful of reinforcements from the PBA.

With an all-professional squad, the Philippines had never finished out of the top four in the Asian Games.

A loss to Mongolia, however, would be courting more disaster for a team that faces serious scrutiny when it flies home.

“Mongolia is a very resilient team and it is going to be very tough for us, especially if we don’t have a complete team,” said Chot Reyes, the beleaguered national coach who bears the brunt of anger over the country’s finish here.

Gilas Pilipinas has played without Marc Pingris for the last two games—a meaningless win over Kazakhstan and a loss to China—while Jimmy Alapag missed the latter after forcing himself to show up injured in a 67-65 victory over the Kazakhs that was nine points short of averting an early exit. Both will be game-time decisions on Wednesday.

While Mongolia doesn’t exactly have basketball pedigree, it has shown a lot of spunk in the tournament.

“When a lot of people see that we will be playing Mongolia, they’ll think it’s an easy win. But it’s not,” said Norwood.

“They have been playing great and we expect a tough game where we will have to work hard to really come out with a win.”

Then again, the way Gilas Pilipinas has played in this tournament, maybe pedigree won’t matter.

The team was up 16 points against Korea before dropping a 95-96 decision that had them teetering on the edge of elimination.

Gilas was up 18 points against Kazakhstan and still failed to extract an 11-point win that would have punched them a semifinal ticket.