Young Gilas squad gets 'welcome to big leagues' moment in OQT

For Gilas Pilipinas' campaign in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, GMA News Online connected with Milos Jovanovic, a veteran Serbian sportswriter, to help break things down from an outside perspective. Read his previews of the Philippines-Serbia game and the Philippines-Dominican Republic game and his breakdown of Gilas' upset scare of Serbia.

"If you want to make this into a learning experience, let’s make it into a learning experience. But if you wanna make this into a basketball game, you better start playing basketball right now".

Those were the words that Tab Baldwin used to open his late third quarter huddle, speaking to his shell-shocked troops in front of the scarce audience in the Aleksandar Nikoli? Hall. After a bright first half, which saw Gilas leave the court for a fifteen minute break with a 41-39 lead, the Dominicans first pulled back, then rolled off a commanding 24-6 run which just about shoved the game out of Gilas reach.

Team Pilipinas, thus, will pack their bags and leave Belgrade with no wins to their name. The miracle against Serbia nearly happened, but in retrospect, we might argue that the team maybe peaked too soon and against the wrong opposition. With less than twenty-four hours between the final whistle against Boban and co. and the tip-off with the Caribbean side, there was scarce time for recovery and analysis. Such is the cruel nature of FIBA international breaks sometimes.

Gilas, as noted above, opened brightly. Baldwin opted to go a tad smaller against the Dominican Republic, starting with Kai Sotto as the lone pivot, flanked with Jordan Heading, William Navarro, SJ Belangel and Justine Baltazar. With Ange Kouame chipping in off the bench, and Mike Nieto enjoying a decent substitute role early on, game looked fairly manageable. The halftime interval ended with a sour note tho – as Heading made a triple off one of Belangel’s ten assists, the Dominicans rallied and pulled back one of their own through Victor Liz. And that turned out to be a harbinger of things to come.

In the second half, things unraveled fairly quickly. Gilas held fast for about three minutes, and then it started to rain down. The Dominicans, powered by the ever-dependable Liz (23 points and solid 5 out of 6 from behind the arc), started clamping down and applying some of their vaunted physicality. This was especially felt by the young Pinoy guards, who suddenly found passing space shrinking to a fraction of what they enjoyed previously. Once Gelvis Solano and Mike Torres found their rhythm as well, the fragile lead started turning into a mountain of deficit. And by the time third quarter rang up, the writing was already on the wall. Final period was a mere formality.

A blowout defeat it eventually might be, but at the same time, the pair of games Gilas performed in were a proper "welcome to the big leagues, boys" experience that Filipino teams are unlikely to encounter on their own Asian turf. And here, I especially mean that second game. With Serbia, the Filipinos were allowed to compete and even show off at times. But the Dominicans would have none of that. Once the game started going out of reach, things turned physical, and this proved too much of a task for this young team.

We can’t, of course, claim this was an unexpected turn of events. The early key everyone hoped for was a big early lead, catching the Dominicans while still asleep. This never happened – a full day worth of rest, as well as coach Lopez being able to scout the Gilas versus Serbia, proved vital components. Lopez was never gonna race the Philippines on their own terms, for that would be a costly error. Rather than doing that, he amped up the defense and built frustration. And then, it was down to the quickness of Solano and Torres, as well as the shooting stroke of Liz, to finish the job.

The aforementioned frustration was noted especially in the backcourt ranks. Belangel, for one, might have filled up the stat sheet to the brim in the assists column, but once he was getting swarmed, he was quickly losing his dribble in the most awkward of places. With Heading and RJ Abarrientos racking up turnovers as well, Kouame, cut off from the attack, was relegated to a peripheral role. Neither him nor Sotto could really impose themselves on the smaller Dominican frontcourt once the heat started catching up with the Pinoy guards.

The inability to advance the offense also adversely affected the three-point performance, not so much in percentage but rather in volume. In a more open-ended game against Serbia, Gilas hoisted 67 shots, including 28 from the three-point range. The day after, their shot tally sank by ten, with mere 18 three-point shots attempted. The stifling, aggressive perimeter defense by the Dominicans forced many wrong decisions by the inexperienced Pinoy youths.

So in the end, as Baldwin somewhat accurately predicted, this turned indeed into a learning experience. Gilas getting somewhere at this OQT was always going to be a long shot at best – beating the Dominicans would have landed Ange, Kai and the boys into the bracket with Italy, which overpowered Puerto Rico in the lone afternoon fixture. As Senegal failed to show up due to COVID-19 related issues, this was to be the only match in the group B. But as we found out, Gilas will leave Serbia without attempting to handle “the Italian job“.

If there are any regrets to the Gilas performance, it comes in the guise of Dwight Ramos. The Fil-Am guard, ever so important in the Asian Cup qualification games, traveled to Serbia with a groin problem and failed to recover in time. With him in the rotation, Team Pilipinas would have had another able pair of hands in the backcourt, and possibly make better use of Sotto and Kouame. Sadly, this never came to pass.

With this valuable experience under their belts, Gilas can look into the closer future. The 2021 Asian Cup is coming soon, with tip-off penciled in at 17th of August in Jakarta. There will be no Serbia or Dominican Republic featuring there – just the usual roster of known foes. But this group is now older and wiser, and they will look to challenge for the medals. And if they show more from the Serbia game and less from the Dominican second half, they could well be a dangerous dark horse.

Milos Jovanovic is a veteran sportswriter based in Belgrade, Serbia, mostly writing about basketball. His past credits include VICE Serbia where he ran the weekly sports column. He also hosts a weekly hoops podcast to be found at the Serbian MONDO news outlet website, and has contributed to and directed several basketball-themed documentaries which were aired on TV nationally. He is fluent in Serbian, English and Dutch and prefers to be left alone when Red Star Belgrade are playing.

—JMB, GMA News