Gilas wins over KSA; fails to impress

A win's a win for Gilas Pilipinas

Debuting before a lazy yet good-sized drizzly Thursday FIBA Asia crowd, Gilas Pilipinas managed to salvage a 78-66 win over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This, after powerhouse Iran flexed its muscles with a dominant 90-point win earlier in the day.

So we didn't blow the Arabs out of the murky Manila Bay waters. Hell, we could barely make enough shots to ensure that we save face and not lose the support of the home crowd which were expecting a Manny Pacquiao vs Ricky Hatton style blowout. But as team captain and spiritual leader Jimmy Alapag said in one of his post-game interviews, "a win's a win."

Gilas starting point guard L.A. Tenorio led the charge with 12 points and 6 assists, but also managed to turn the ball over an eye-popping 5 times. Fortunately, Ranidel de Ocampo (9 points, 6 rebounds), Marc Pingris (8 points, 9 rebounds) and Jayson Castro all kept Gilas afloat when the Arabs were staying a tad bit too close for comfort. Marcus Douthit flexed his muscles in the 3rd, doing just enough to keep the pesky and trigger happy Arabs at bay.

Did we see the real Gilas, or can we expect more?

Definitely not the real Gilas Pilipinas folks. The Arabs aren't on our level at this point, and it was pretty obvious that Gilas head coach Chot Reyes was holding back (he wasn't blowing his top off after repetitive Tenorio turnovers). No need to over execute on this one, just moved the ball and looked for the best possible scoring option.

Our frontline held its own but that was a given against an undersized opponent. Douthit, De Ocampo and Pingris were backed up by upstarts Japeth Aguilar and Junemar Fajardo. For the most part, we loved Aguilar's activity (and that Alapag et. al. was sure not to over-feed him the basketball despite the 6"9 beanpole's constant hollering for it). Fajardo, well, he opened up with a stiff-arm jumper that was short and got punished for it by riding the bench.

What worries us is the state of our shooters. Gary David went 2/11, Jeff Chan went 2/5 while Larry Fonacier finished with a respectable 4/9 (he had enough smarts to go to his jumpshots when his threes weren't falling early). We can't afford another bad shooting night from majority of our shooters. Castro was brilliant, but because our guys couldn't make anything from outside, the Arabs started clogging the paint. Ditto with Douthit before he really started going to work. Terrible floor spacing because of bad shooting. Can't have this against China, South Korea and Iran.

We're also concerned about Coach Chot's decision to play Pingris for almost 21 minutes. Everyone here knows that Pingris is limited offensively, so why are we putting him out there for all to see and scout? Appreciate the hustle and energy, but against so-so teams, maybe we should preserve him or keep him under locks to surprise whichever Asian superstar he's ultimately asked to guard.

Overall, not the kind of start everyone was hoping for but good enough to help us off to a 1-0 start (which is just as good as Iran's).