By Ashley Bercasio
The Philippine men’s basketball team won’t be playing in the quarterfinals of the FIBA Asia Cup for the first time in 15 years.
Japan snuffed out Gilas Pilipinas’ last playoff chance after dealing the latter a 102-81 defeat Tuesday night, July 19, at Istora Senayan in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The Akatsuki five opened the game swinging, draining four three-pointers in the first quarter for a 32-16 lead after the first 12 minutes.
Japan would never relinquish the lead that once reached 28 points.
The Philippines was able to trim down the lead to 10, 37-27, after a couple of free throws from Bobby Ray Parks Jr. five minutes remaining in the second quarter but Japan’s firepower was simply too much for the young national squad that even an ankle injury to NBA player Yuta Watanabe in the third quarter did not matter much to the game’s result.
“The big deficit in the first quarter, again, was our big problem,” said Gilas Pilipinas head coach Chot Reyes.
Yuki Togashi led Japan after scoring 18 points on an efficient five-of-seven shooting clip at the rainbow territory.
Naturalized player Luke Evans, Watanabe, Yudai Nishida and Yutaroh Suda also finished in double digits, chipping in 17, 15, 15 and 14, respectively.
Parks, on the other hand, paced Gilas with his 16-point and three-assist outing.
Kiefer Ravena and Carl Tamayo also helped with the scoring chores, scoring 15 and 10 markers.
“Obviously, the result is not what we wanted and again we are very sorry that we’ve disappointed a lot of our countrymen, our fellow Filipinos,” Reyes remarked. “But like I said, we brought a very young team here and the experience is just going to make them better,” he continued.
“To be able to be exposed to the kind of intensity and level of play here at the Asian Cup, there is not one player on our team of the 12 who has ever been to a FIBA Asia Cup, this is all their first time, so, like I said, we wish we could get at least to the top eight but we weren’t able to get the job done so, there’s very little to say,” Reyes said.
While the Gilas dominated the boards, 40-30, they were unable to replicate their near-perfect game against New Zealand as they committed 17 turnovers which Japan converted to 23 points.
“Japan came out with a great game plan, credit to them for the game they played, they forced us to 17 turnovers and in the end that’s the ball game.”
The last time the national squad failed to make the top eight of the Asia Cup was in 2007 when they finished 9th in Tokushima, Japan. – gb