As great as the first window of Gilas Pilipinas, head coach Tim Cone could only wish that he could keep this team together for a little longer as the Nationals turn their focus on the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Riga, Latvia in July.

But sadly, that won’t be the case.

“We won't play until another three or four months. And so it kind of feels like an ending for us. We wish we had one more game to play next week or in a couple of days but that's not something we control,” Cone lamented after Gilas sweep of its assignments against Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei in the first window of the 2025 FIBA Asia Cup qualifiers.

“I wish we're practicing tomorrow. They don't but I do. hehe I wish we could keep this thing going but that's out of our control so we'll live with what,” he added 

Players will have to go back to their respective mother teams in their own leagues as Cone goes back to the drawing board and plans out the preparations for the much bigger challenge against higher ranked Latvia and Georgia.

While future looks bright for Gilas especially following the two dominant wins, Cone said the team is facing a tough climb in the OQT and the team needs to make bigger strides if it wishes to be competitive against their European counterpart

“I said we're all looking forward to coming back in June. This 2-0 start is great, but that's a little baby step on the way,” said Cone.

“We need to make a lot more bigger strides as we go as the next game we play is Latvia, it is Top 8. And they just beat Spain a couple of days ago. So we got Latvia and Georgia coming up. So can we get to that level? That's gonna answer more questions for us,” he pointed out.

Under the program Cone personally crafted for the country’s bid for an Olympic return, the first window served up as preparation for the OQT. On top of that, the team will also be given a 10-day practice time in the lead up to the July games.

“The agreement is that we got 10 days before we actually play our first game against Latvia. So that might be 10 days here, Inspire camp everyday or maybe it's going out and trying to find some friendlies against European teams so we can get a feel with the way they play,” explained Cone.

Cone said Gilas is still in the middle of figuring out on how to maximize the 10-day training which could include a couple tuneup games especially since the team had invites to play against Lithuania, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

“We're gonna work our way through those and see what we can do.”