Gilas Pilipinas guns for a sweep of the Southeast Asian Games men's basketball eliminations Saturday night against lowly Myanmar, eyeing some fine-tuning and cohesion-building ahead of the semifinals.
The mighty Filipinos have flexed their muscles in back-to-back routs over Singapore (110-58) and vastly-improved Vietnam (110-69) and unless a major catastrophy takes place, the hosts should blow by the winless Burmese (0-2) in the 8:15 p.m. encounter that serves as warmup for their semis stint.
With their No. 1 standing in Group A, the charges of coach Tim Cone will face the No. 2 finisher in Group B, which could either be Indonesia or Malaysia, in the Last-4.
The Indons of former Gilas mentor Rajko Toroman and the Malaysians tote identical 1-1 win-loss cards behind Group B pacesetter Thailand (2-0) and will aim to clinch the second semis seat against separate rivals Saturday afternoon. Indonesia takes on Cambodia and Malaysia battles the Thais.
Gilas encountered stiff resistance in the first 20 minutes from the Vietnamese, who are bannered by quality Viet-American big man Christopher Dierker but buckled down to work defensively to establish order and take the game with plenty to spare.
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"We expect ourselves to wear down teams," said Cone after his high-powered crew did exactly that to the pesky Vietnamese.
"It's amazing that we have 12 guys here, maybe the best 12 players in the league. But you think about the PBA, I mean, the PBA is 30 players, 40 players deep easily, that could play at a high level in the national team."
"And basically, we're playing teams that are national teams, and they're like, six, seven players deep. And to me, the depth of our league, and the depth of this particular team is truly amazing compared to some of the other countries. We can go 40 players deep, and still we don't have a drop-off. So it's really amazing, our depth," said Cone.
And when locked-in defensively, Gilas is such an unstoppable force.
"Kailangan aggressive kami lagi. Wag maging kampante. Nung una nakagawa sila nung run buti nahabol pa tapos sabi ni coach i-prioritize namin yung depensa namin. Kapag naka stops kami dun namin makukuha yung opensa namin," said June Mar Fajardo, who was on beast mode against the smaller Vietnam.
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Five-time PBA MVP Fajardo dropped 12 of his 23 markers in the third period as the Pinoy cagers broke away for good after only leading by 12 at the half.
"We're still new together. I think the players don't really know yet what their blueprint for success is. They're still searching it out, they don't know what it is so they don't go looking for it all the time and we have to constantly remind them what it's gonna take for them to play well together," said Cone.
"They're used to have ball in their hands, used to taking all the shots so we have to get them to continue to share the ball, try to create assists and then focus on defensive side. A lot of these guys aren't demanded to play defense as a stopper which we were demanding them to do because we want them to be just like any other player," he said.
"So these are the batltles that we have, that we battle ourselves but once we get into our rhythm you could see the team, the whole personality changes, the tempo changes and they're like a steamroller, blowing down the court, they can't be stopped," he further said.
Vietnam bore the brunt of that.
"I think this is one of the toughest, if not the toughest teams in the tournament and we still beat them by what, 40 points. So that's good news for us," said Cone. (OL) / PHOTO:Marlo Cueto (spin.ph)
