Latvia coach admits getting caught off guard by blistering Gilas start

MANILA, Philippines – Gilas Pilipinas’ strong start “created a sort of panic” for powerhouse Latvia, head coach Luca Banchi admitted, as the Asian team stunned the hometown bets early Thursday morning (Manila time).

Gilas started the game 8-0, which set the tone the rest of the way, and took a 16-point lead after the first quarter as the Nationals blasted Latvia in Riga, 89-80, in a wire-to-wire affair to kick off its journey in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament. 

After the loss, Banchi lauded the Philippines’s “excellent performance from the very beginning.” 

“Unfortunately, the game started immediately bad and that created a sort of panic in the team. We became rushed. When you see the number you can understand that we had a lot of threes. Most of the time open [and we missed],” he said in the postgame press conference. 

“The feeling was we were trying to bring back the [flow] of the game, that unfortunately we lost from the beginning,” he added. 

Latvia’s Rodions Kurucs, for his part, said he feels his team was not able to execute offensively and defensively.

“I feel like we didn’t execute our offense and then we didn’t do our job on defense, which was the initial plan from the beginning of the game. That was our initial focus. We let them play their game, and we didn’t play physical enough against their bigs,” he said.

“They were just running whatever they want. On the offensive end, we just
 didn’t make our shots and we were kind of… I don’t know, our energy [was lacking] because of that and we were lacking on defense because of that,” he added. 

Kurucs paced the Latvians with 18 points, seven rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block. 

Davis Bertans and Janis Strelnieks added 10 apiece for the losing team, which shot just 38% from the field. They made just 10 of their 42 attempts from the 3-point area. 

The Philippines, on the other hand, made 30 of their 62 field goals, good for 48% shooting. 

The 26-year-old wing also lamented their turnovers and sluggish defensive effort. 

“Today we played… we had a lot of turnovers and like I said we played bad in defense, they scored a lot so we can’t run down the score and they also ran off our turnovers. I think that was bad for us.” 

Banchi likewise stressed that their loss should be a wake-up call. 

“So we have to congratulate them because our opponents played a very good game, very solid. On the other hand, for us, it’s another [chance] just to reset and focus on the next step of the tournament, being conscious that we need to elevate the quality of our basketball,” he said.  

“Mentally, stay in the game because as I told everybody tonight, this will probably [be] a turning point of our tournament to understand what we really need — to continue to believe in our possibility to win the tournament.”