MANILA, Philippines — Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone plans to revisit the national team’s offense shortly after the Filipinos closed window 2 of the FIBA World Cup 2027 Asian Qualifiers winless.
Sunday night saw the Philippines got its behind kicked by world basketball powerhouse Australia, 93-66 before a stunned hometown crowd at the SM Mall of Asia Arena.
“It’s back to the drawing board a little bit,” said Cone during Sunday’s postgame press conference after the 27-point beatdown to Australia. “I think we’ve gonna have to take a look a little bit at our offense and maybe try to simplify things a little more."
With the Philippines misfiring from the three-point zone, Cone felt the need to make some change on the way they run their offense.
“We got shooters. I think everybody complains about our team that we have. We have Dwight. We got Juan. We got Justin. We got KQ. And Calvin. We have the shooters on the team. We are just not generating the shots that we want to generate. It’s not about the shots going in or out. It’s about getting the quality of shots,” explained Cone.
The Philippines shot just 29 percent from three-point zone, making just 9-of-31 overall.
Dwight Ramos and Kevin Quiambao combined for just 2-of-9 from beyond the arc, Calvin Oftana made just one of two, while Juan Gomez De Liano missed his two attempts.
“And that’s what I said when I talked about we have to kinda look at what we are doing, maybe simplify it a little bit more so that we can get a little bit more open looks. But I don’t think there’s any problem with our shooting. We just haven’t shot the ball well,” said Cone.
Justin Brownlee was the only bright spot for Gilas as he finished with 20 points on 4-of-10 shooting from beyond the arc.
It was a good bounce back effort for Brownlee who only scored four points on 2-of-10 shooting in Gilas’ 66-69 loss to New Zealand last Thursday.