Learning simply never stops for Gilas Pilipinas as head coach Tim Cone looks forward to carrying the lessons and experiences to the February window after formally punching their ticket to the 2025 FIBA Asia Cup in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

After successfully defending its home court with big wins over New Zealand and Hong Kong, Gilas is set to stake its pristine record in two challenging road games in the third and final window of the qualifiers.

While it's practically non-bearing for the Filipinos as far as the Asia Cup is concerned, Cone is taking the remaining two games seriously as it offers an opportunity for Gilas to learn how to get comfortable playing in a hostile environment.

The Filipinos are playing Chinese Taipei on Feb. 20 and then New Zealand on Feb. 23 – both squads raring to get back to Gilas after it defeated them in their first meetings.

“The two away games we’re going to have in February is going to be the toughest part of this window. Two toughest teams, and both on the road,” Cone said of their last two assignments.

“It's going to be a tough load for us and we're already looking forward to that challenge,” he added.

Of course, the bigger challenge for Gilas remains the short preparation time and the big gaps between the windows.

While Cone, through his program, has put emphasis on what he called cumulative preparation through the windows, he admitted that the team also had to go through refreshers every start of training camps to once again get themselves familiarized with the triangle..

“With the short preparation time and the big gaps between the windows, it's hard to keep everybody updated on the system and how we do things,” said Cone.

“I was telling the guys that on the first practice that we were coming back. I kind of assumed that they would know everything because we just came from the OQT a few months ago, but they go back and they start playing a different system, and they completely forgot,” Cone said,

Still, Cone believes the away games against tough New Zealand and Chinese Taipei team would help the team form better cohesion especially that almost every game Gilas would play from hereon would be either on a neutral ground or the opponent’s home court.

“That's going to be important for us because we're going to have to learn how to play on the road and win on the road,” said the veteran mentor

“It's always great to have our fans at full houses here. It's awesome, but when we get on the road, we have to be able to play at the same level because all of our tournaments that we play are going to be on the road,” he added.

“We had that one opportunity in the World Cup in 2023 to play at home but now all of them are going to be on the road. So we've got to learn how to play well on the road,” Cone stressed.