Gilas 5 all business, puts HK away by 51
CHANGSHA CITY, China—The real Gilas Pilipinas showed up to play on Thursday morning and vowed never to fall back into a state of disharmony again.
Still licking the wounds of an enormous reversal the day before, the Filipinos put order back in Group B play of the Fiba Asia Olympic Qualifier by blowing Hong Kong off the floor, 101-50, at Changsha Social Work College gymnasium here.
Jason Castro fired 21 points and led others in twin digits for the Filipinos, who fell to Palestine in the inaugurals on Wednesday.
On Friday, the Filipinos battle lowly Kuwait at 4:30 p.m., and the Nationals now know that they can’t take anyone for granted anymore.
“We can’t look past Kuwait now; we looked past Palestine and we lost,” guard Gabe Nor- wood said after Gilas rose to 1-1. “We have to take care of Kuwait before we can think of anything after it ... We’re resilient.”
By standards, Kuwait should be an easy team to handle for the Filipinos, considering that Hong Kong ripped the Kuwaitis apart, 8750, in the inaugurals on Wednesday.
“We played without heart the last time around,” Marc Pingris said in Filipino, referring to the 75-73 loss to Palestine. “We have to give more than our 100 percent each game.”
“Even if we won that close game, it would have been a wakeup call for us,” Norwood said.
As things stand for Gilas, it could still take the No. 1 seeding into the next phase if Hong Kong defeats Palestine, also on Friday, and the Filipinos win as expected over Kuwait.
That would create a three-way tie for the top at 2-1. And because of the 51-point win over Hong Kong, the Philippines could end up bagging No. 1 just the same.
“We’re disappointed because we knew we could have beaten (Palestine) by 20 or 30 [points],” Castro said in the post-game press conference. “In this game, we set our minds into playing 40 minutes of [hard] basketball.”
The Philippines played Hong Kong man-toman all the way and never let up. The Filipinos held the enemy to two points in the first six minutes and to two in the last five minutes of the first half as well for a 51-22 halftime lead.
“We didn’t get that game yesterday away from our system,” coach Tab Baldwin said. The scores: GILAS PILIPINAS 101— Castro 21, Blatche 17, Hontiveros 14, Romeo 11, De Ocampo 10, Abueva 8, Ganuelas 7, Intal 5, Thoss 4, Pingris 2, Taulava 2, Norwood 0.
HONG KONG 50— Chan 13, Reid 11, Wong 7, Xu 6, Au-Yeung 5, Lin 5, Cheng 2, Leung 1, So 0, Lau 0, Lee 0, Szeto 0.
Quarters: 28-15; 51-22; 83-38; 101-50