Gilas faces must-win games to make it out of group play at Asian Games

Gilas Pilipinas’ rough loss to Bahrain cast more doubt on its chances of retaining the gold medal in men’s basketball as the country’s campaign in the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games officially got going on Friday.

Coach Tim Cone refused to sugarcoat much of the 89-85 loss, a scoreline that wasn’t reflective of the difficulty Gilas endured for most of the contest.

“We expected more from ourselves, [especially having a lot of] basketball-crazy fans,” Cone said. “So we’re disappointed.”

A decisive stretch during the waning moments of the second quarter all the way to the third spelled doom for Gilas, as it was left helpless with Bahrain’s combination of size advantage and outside conversions, all the while with the Filipinos struggling to make shots reminiscent of their two blowout defeats in an exhibition series with South Korea.

Calvin Oftana was one of the few, if not the lone bright spot, for Gilas, making good on Cone’s belief as a “plug-and-play guy” being a part of his system for the long term.

Oftana showed no signs of rust or injury concerns, having missed the last three months with hamstring and toe injuries, firing 31 points on 11-of-19 shooting in undoubtedly his best performance in a Gilas uniform.

But Oftana’s big game went for naught, as the rest of the team struggled to find its rhythm to end up shooting at a cold 38-percent clip.

Defensive match-up problems were also evident, with three of Bahrain’s four naturalized players in ex-NBA player JaKarr Sampson, big-bodied Elijah Thomas and even Uros Ilic proving too much to handle.

“We had a hard time with their size,” said Cone. “Even though we won the rebounds (51-35), we had a hard time defending their size. [They] forced us to collapse down on their bigs because we are undersized.”

“And that either allowed them to score inside or allowed them to kick out for three-point shots and we couldn’t cover both,” added Cone.

And now Gilas has no course but to play with a sense of urgency on Saturday against Kazakhstan, as another loss will likely end all chances of even advancing to the quarterfinals as a top two finisher in Group C or as two of the best three third-place finishers.

Cone said he and the rest of the team can’t dwell on the narrow loss longer.

“At some point, you can be disappointed only long enough,” said Cone. “And then, you got to move on.”

“This is the first game of the tournament, so we got to move on,” he said. “But we feel like we know that we can be better than we did today. And I think we will.”