Cone relishes 'growth experience' for Gilas in Olympic qualifiers

MANILA, Philippines -- Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone said the Nationals’ historic run in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament (OQT) is a “growth experience” for the team, as they try to get better going forward.

Cone and Gilas had an upset for the ages against World No. 6 Latvia on Thursday, leading by a huge margin en route to the Philippines’ first official win against a European team in 64 years, according to FIBA.

They then almost went 2-0 against European teams but fell intentionally short against Georgia to ensure a semifinal berth.

And on Saturday night, they came up against Brazil, 71-60, to bow out of the tourney and kiss their Paris Olympics dreams goodbye.

After the game, Cone said that with their performance in the OQT, it is a “now-we-know moment.”

“It’s hard to talk about this right after you lose but it's a growth experience for us. It's kinda like [a] now-we-know moment. Now we know we can compete, so how can we get that next step in which we can get a little bit better, not just compete but win,” he told reporters in the postgame press conference.

“Playing these kinds of tournaments where you are playing three games in four days, it just gets harder and harder every game. These are things we'll need to adjust to,” he added.

‘An incredible disappointment’

The coach stressed that while they did not expect to be in the semifinals, once they got there, they expected to go deeper and deeper into the tournament.

“Like I said, I mean we didn't expect to be here but once we're here, we expected to win so it's an incredible disappointment for us,” he said.

“We're not gonna jump up and down and say ‘Yey, we did our thing!’ and everybody was proud of us. Hopefully, that doesn't get into our mindset,” he added.

“We need to keep pushing and moving forward, getting better.”

Just almost a year ago, Gilas had a dismal showing in the FIBA World Cup, winning just one contest and ended up 24th in the final standings.

This, though, led the Nationals to qualify for the OQT.

A few months after then-Gilas head coach Chot Reyes “stepped aside” as tactician, Cone stepped in and led the Philippines to its first Asian Games gold in 61 years.

“The whole part of bringing this particular program together, which was different from what we had in the World Cup [last year], is the fact that we’re gonna hopefully keep these guys together over the next three to four years, trying to keep them together going into the next World Cup.”