GILAS Pilipinas coach Tim Cone isn’t taking solace on the fact that the Philippines nearly beat New Zealand in their Window 2 collision Thursday night in the FIBA World Cup 2027 Asian Qualifiers at the SM Mall of Asia Arena, Pasay City.
Dwight Ramos led the team’s gutsy late-game comeback that failed in the endgame when he missed a last-second three-point heave near mid-court.
The Tall Blacks escaped with a 69-66 win, their first in three games in the qualifiers.
“I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I’m happy with our performance,” said Cone, in addressing the media men after the game.
“But the bottom line, we are not going to take any pride in almost winning or making the game close or whatever. We showed up to win and we didn’t do that tonight.”
Cone believed the New Zealand team is beatable, and that’s something the national squad was able to achieve when Gilas Pilipinas pulled off a historic 93-89 victory in their FIBA Asia Cup 2025 Qualifiers in November 2024.
Of course, in that well-documented win, the Philippines had 7-foot-3 beanpole Kai Sotto to patrol the shaded lanes.
But on Thursday night, Sotto wasn’t around.
Taking his spot was Quentin Millora-Brown, who paired up quite well with energy guy AJ Edu.
Cone took note of the two big men’s contributions on the defensive end.
“There were certain parts of the game where I thought we did well. We defended well. We competed on the board. I thought our big guys, Q and AJ played real well,” Cone said.
The 6-foot-10 Edu had five points, 11 rebounds and three blocked shots, while Millora-Brown, also 6-foot-10, finished with seven, six boards and two assists.
But offensively, the Philippines shot just 32.5 percent from the floor and a frigid 18 percent from the three-point zone after making just seven of 37 attempts.
Justin Brownlee and Kevin Quiambao combined to miss all eight of their attempts from beyond the arc, while Ramos was just 1-of-10 overall.
“I hate saying that we didn’t make shots because there is more to the game than just making shots. That’s an easy explanation. But if you are saying that, just because you are not getting good shots, and we didn’t get the shots that we wanted,” said Cone.
“We didn’t get the flow that we wanted. Credit goes to them because they defended well as well.”