Gilas Pilipinas plays Georgia next in FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament

Gilas Pilipinas is not yet done.

After pulling off an upset against Latvia, 89-80, in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament on early Thursday (Philippine time), the national team will next face world no. 23 Georgia on Thursday night.

Gilas head coach Tim Cone is aware of the pressure of the team's upcoming match and said the team just needs to play as they need to.

"You know, whenever you win a game, the expectations go up. You had to keep chasing the expectations and hopefully we won’t feel that. Hopefully, we can communicate to our team that we can’t play the expectations. We just play the way that we play so," Cone said in a post-game conference.

"Like I said, our country is so passionate about basketball, there’s a lot of intense pressure to succeed, and I know it seems like we haven’t been successful but that doesn’t mean anything to our team."

"They want us to be successful all the time so we have to turn around and play Georgia tomorrow, 3:00 early game, and our country’s gonna expect us, especially after winning tonight, they’re gonna expect us to win tomorrow and it’s gonna be a really tough job for us to beat Georgia," added Cone.

If the Philippines wins against Georgia, Gilas will advance to the semifinals of the qualifiers as the best team from Group A of the Latvia tournament.

Among those included in Georgia's lineup are NBA players Tornike Shengelia, formerly with the Brooklyn Nets and Chicago Bulls, and San Antonio Spurs' Sandro Mamukelashvili.

Georgia fell to Latvia in its opening game, 83-55. Georgia needs to beat the Philippines by 19 points or more to advance to the semifinals.

—JKC, GMA Integrated News