Even just by seeing his first game in Gilas Pilipinas uniform, national team head coach Tim Cone is already convinced that Juan Gomez de Liano is going to be a mainstay in the team.
He declared exactly just that after the 6-foot-1 combo guard’s solid showing in Gilas’ 69-66 loss to New Zealand on Thursday, Feb . 26
“He’s going to be a mainstay on this team. Remember, this was his first game in front of a big crowd, with a lot of pressure,” Cone said of Gomez de Liano who had 10 points on 4-of-11 shooting.
He played for 14 minutes and came off the bench in the contest.
While his performance isn’t much, especially compared to what he’s been doing in the PBA, Cone believes Gomez de Liano would eventually settle on his role and would even be more comfortable from here on.
“He’s going to get comfortable, and he’s going to do a lot more than he did today. And he did a lot today — but he’s going to do even more moving forward,” said Cone.
“He’s a special talent,” added Cone, who already has high expectations of Gomez de Liano especially after what he had shown in the training camp.
“He was playing, maybe one of our best, if not the best player in our whole practice camp that we had in preparation, and so we're not surprised by what he came out and did,” the veteran coach revealed.
With Gomez de Liano only at 26-years-old, he is a great addition to young core of Gilas which also featured young guns Dwight Ramos, Kevin Quiambao, Carl Tamayo, AJ Edu, Kai Sotto and Quentin Millora-Brown.