RP Youth stuns Iran, eyes 5th place

TEHRAN – The Nokia-RP team twice rallied from big deficits and upended host Iran, 85-84, to regain some measure of pride following back-to-back defeats to Korea and Japan in the 2008 FIBA-Asia junior men championship at the Azadi Stadium here Tuesday.

Frank Golla came through with a three-point play to tie the count at 84-all then Joel de Guzman nailed a free throw as the RP boys stunned the host team.

The Philippines takes a crack at fifth place as it next plays dethroned champion China.

Iran, however, kept its place in the crossover knockout semifinals against Syria with the other semifinal pairing pitting Japan and Kazakhstan.

Interestingly, all the semifinalists – China, Korea, Lebanon and Chinese-Taipei – in the last Asian junior championship failed to make the Final Four this time.

With a place in the Final Four secured, Iran opted to rest its key players against the Philippines and paid the price.

“We’ve regained the respect of the other countries here,” said RP team coach Franz Pumaren. “Too bad we couldn’t be consistent in our level of play. But in hindsight, this (win) shows that we could have done better in this tournament. Iran might eventually win the championship.”

Ryan Garcia scored 19 points with Matthew Wright adding 13 and Golla 10 as the Filipinos handed the Iranians their first defeat in the tourney.

“We had played four tough games in five nights. Moreover the last two nights had been very hard on the boys. That’s why the bench (second stringers) played longer,” said Vadim Buryakov, the host team’s Kazakh coach.

Iran top gun Emad Salmani, averaging 16.75 points per game, sat out the contest.

Though resting their first stringers, the Iranians dominated the game early on, leading by as many as 15 at 79-64.