Cone on Gilas Pilipinas' 'painful' loss to Brazil: 'We weren't just good enough'

Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone said the national team 'was just not good enough' as they fell to Brazil, 71-60, on Saturday in the semifinals of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Latvia.

Cone described the loss as 'painful,' especially after pulling off an upset against Latvia and almost completing a come from behind win against Georgia in the group stage.

"I don't know what to say. It's funny that we didn't expect to be here, but when we got here we expected to win. It's very painful that we didn't," Cone said at the post-game conference.

"Especially after having a halftime lead and coming out and, I think, going on a 12-0 or 14-0 run on us to start the third quarter was painful to watch. But there's a reason Brazil's the 12th ranked team in the world and they proved it tonight."

Dwight Ramos echoed Cone's sentiment.

"It just takes one night you don't show up and play your best and you lose. That's how good the teams here are. Tonight, we just did not play our best. Brazil beat us."

Cone also admitted that missing Kai Sotto was a factor in the crucial match.

"We don't want to make excuses but losing Kai was big for us because it just took away our depth in the frontline and forced June Mar Fajardo to have to overplay minutes and that kind of all mushroomed it right there," he said.

Sotto was rushed to the hospital after the loss against Georgia. He was in the bench during the Brazil game but was not fielded.

"But the bottomline is we just weren’t good enough tonight," said Cone.

"We got to be better. We’re trying to tell ourselves that almost isn’t good enough. Almost winning, almost getting there, almost that, is not good enough. We got to find a way to get over the hump and get there, and tonight, we didn’t do that."

The national team head coach also added that Brazil played physical which helped them get the win.

"We just didn’t bring our best tonight. [We] started off strong but we just couldn’t sustain it against their physicality. We're just lacking a big. We had to overplay our frontline. I think more than anything, June Mar got really tired having to battle no. 51 (Bruno Caboclo) and no. 6 (Cristiano Felicio). Those were two guys who were ganging up on him. It was a tough battle for him being there all by himself."

Caboclo had 15 points, while Fajardo had 10 points.

However, Cone said the team will move forward from the heartbreaking finish. 

"Like I said, I mean we didn't expect to be here but once we're here, we expected to win so it's an incredible disappointment for us. We're not gonna jump up and down and say 'Yay! We did our thing and everybody was proud of us.' Hopefully, that doesn't get into our mindset. We need to keep pushing moving forward, getting better."

—JKC, GMA Integrated News