Pinoy cagers trim South Africa

SINGAPORE – The Philippines scored an expected 26-12 romp over lowly South Africa at the close of the elims of the 3-on-3 basketball competitions in the first Youth Olympic Games – its first ever but hopefully not the last.

For the RP cagers will vie for the highest ranking it could in the consolation round – ninth place – starting tomorrow at the Scape Youth Space here.

They will take on the Central African Republic dribblers, who barely lost a spot in the quarters after yielding the No. 2 spot in Group C to Israel in a tiebreak.

In case RP hurdles CAR, it will meet the winner between New Zealand and Iran in the next round then dispute the ninth place honors against the top team in the lower bracket, which features Egypt, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and Turkey.

Michael Pate missed all three three-point attempts but went 3-for-3 in the perimeter to finish with six points, a good backup to Jeron Teng’s top scoring 11-point output.

But the Filipinos didn’t need to play good to dispose of a weak RSA side, which lost all its four games by an average of 24 points.

Bobby Ray Parks hit one triple and wound up with five while Cris Tolomia missed three triples and made only a pair of two-pointers from seven tries for four points.

The RP cagers yielded the boards, 16-18, but were simply too good against a fumbling RSA squad, scoring 14 straight points in one stretch to break the game wide open.

Meanwhile, joining Israel in the quarters are fancied teams in Serbia, Argentina and USA, which swept Groups A, B and C, respectively, along with Greece, Lithuania and Croatia and Spain, which clinched the two berths in Group D.