34th Jones Cup: Pilipinas wins, still sloppy

Pilipinas goes only
as far as Douthit takes them

The new-look men's national basketball team are off on the right track with a hard-earned 88-80 victory over a sluggish Jordan squad led by a clearly out of gym shape Rasheim Wright. While we were able to hack out the W and even post a double digit lead in the first quarter, the lapses (mostly in the second quarter) need to be taken addressed ASAP.

Coach Chot Reyes stuck to what has become his teams' identity over the years: run to the rim basketball. Drive and kick. Nothing fancy, just a plain "get the ball to the rim as close as you can" mentality that rubbed off even on the putty-soft Gabe Norwood.

Bright spots for the team are naturalized center Marcus Douthit who finished with 17 points and 14 rebounds after spending most of the 1st quarter on the bench due to foul trouble. Then came the shooters Jeffrei Chan, Gary David and Larry Fonacier who found themselves open one too many times on the floor. Call it a lack of scouting on the Jordanians' part, but they went with a traditional zone defense obviously banking on the Philippines' old reputation of being an "all drive, no J" team.


Sol Mercado also made a mark on the floor, specially in the third quarter wherein the Philippines decided to take control and run the Jordanians off the court. Mercado was just too strong, too fast and too crafty with the basketball-- leaving his flat-footed and unathletic counterparts in the dust. Sol could effectively be that one guy who terrorizes opponents with his energy and scoring prowess coming off the bench.

Moving forward, Douthit is the obvious pillar of the team who needs to stay away from early foul trouble. Let his power forward (Ranidel de Ocampo) take care of that. They have a bunch of 4s (de Ocampo, Enrico Villanueva and Sonny Thoss) in the line-up but only one true, FIBA-worthy center. It should be noted though that there's an obvious chemistry between Douthit and RDO (because they are vastly skilled and polished post players with range). Then there's point guard L.A. Tenorio-- probably drooling at the mouth with all the offensive options he's been given to play with. RDO scored most of the Philippines' points in the first mostly off Tenorio assists. If the shooters could only move a little more on the floor, maybe use some brush screens and even run the baseline a bit, then they could break defenses wide open.

Great effort by the team, the 2nd quarter breakdown was more of Douthit being on the bench and the rest of the team totally unfamiliar with each other but they were able to check that come the latter stages of the game. Interesting to note that the team played little to no zone defense versus the Jordanians and opted for continuous switching and close-outs. This ploy might not work against quick, reverse-passing teams like Iran, Korea and China (or even SMART Gilas I).

The road gets tougher from here, with a United States team also part of the tournament.

Laban Pilipinas!