Starting guard Dwight Ramos rued that the Nationals did not play their best basketball when they needed it the most, succumbing to Brazil, 71-60, and ending the Filipinos' hopes of reaching the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Dwight Ramos: 'We just didn't play our best'
At a glance
The off night simply came at the worst time for Gilas Pilipinas.
Starting guard Dwight Ramos rued that the Nationals did not play their best basketball when they needed it the most, succumbing to Brazil, 71-60, and ending the Filipinos' hopes of reaching the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Gilas led by as many as 12 points behind a scintillating start but since then faltered particularly in the third frame when it was limited to just six points while failing to put on a stop to Brazil’s big rally.
“It takes one night don't show up to play your best and you lose. That's how good the teams are here. We just didn't play our best and Brazil beat us,” said Ramos who had 13 points but eight of those came in the opening frame.
The Nationals even held on to a six-point lead at the break, 33-27, but a nine-minute scoreless stretch bridging the middle quarters were just too much to bear for Gilas.
The Filipinos were actually aware of what was coming especially with Brazil, through its first two games, also had slow starts but managed to come back, but Gilas simply didn’t have any answer.
“They are a good team. They played behind in all three games they played. They played behind against Cameroon and they played behind against us and in all three games they came back,” Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone said of Brazil.
“We knew that they were gonna come back, we just don't have the answer,” he admitted.
That was indeed the case in the third frame when Gilas seemingly couldn’t get anything going in the third frame when Brazil made the decisive run. The Filipinos were bothered by the physical defense.
“They played us with a real physical brand of basketball. To be honest, we were saying this at half time, we were making tough shots in the first half and they were missing a lot of open shots and we knew when they got it turned around it was gonna get difficult for us in the second half,” said Cone.
When they finally managed to adjust, Brazil was just too poised to even let Gilas threaten on its lead. Brazil veteran guard Marcelinho Huertas delivered the big shots that doused any comeback effort for Gilas.
“Huertas hit us hard in the ball screens, pulling up, doing nice things and I think we just kinda panicked a little bit. We did a lot of one on one. We were not moving the ball like we normally do.
“That's what I say, we just didn't bring our best tonight,” admitted Cone.