Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone was not all too worried with the Nationals' recent struggles in their friendlies during their Doha trip as much as the fans and observers were.

Despite visibly struggling in the mini-tournament, Cone believes it was exactly what they needed to prepare themselves for the bigger battles ahead.

“It’s been tough. We said from the very beginning, we wanted it to be tough,” said Cone in an interview uploaded to the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas Facebook page.

“I think teams learn from adversity. Teams learn when it’s really hard. That’s why you have hard practices, why you play tough opponents because that makes you better,” added the veteran coach.

Cone insisted that winning remained important to the team especially when thrusted against the Asian teams, but, at the end of the day, the Doha trip was only a part of the preparation.

“It’s been disappointing so far. We didn’t perform as well as we wanted to in Doha. Any time that we are playing on the world stage against other national teams it’s very important that we win no doubt about that,” insisted Cone.

“We want to represent the country well and we want to do what our fans want back home, to feel proud but the bottom line was the Doha trip was a learning camp, a development camp. As much as they are important they weren’t crucial,” he explained.

Glas barely won against Qatar and absorbed blowout losses to Egypt and Lebanon, but for Cone, none of those really mattered anymore and should put their focus on the ones that are.

“It was tough. It was not a lot of fun watching teams beat us up. We knew we should have played better, we should have been better but again that’s in the past and that doesnt have anything to do with the qualifiers or our world ranking," he said.