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Sure, Gilas Pilipinas overcame a sluggish start on Thursday night and ran away with a key win to kickstart its grand plan of returning to the Fiba (International Basketball Federation) World Cup in four years.
But the first half of that 94-64 rout of Hong Kong, fashioned out before a crowd made up mostly of overseas Filipino orkers at Tsuen Wan Sports Centre, had national coach Tim Cone longing for more.
And rightly so.
“That’s more of what we want from this team—to create more offense from our defense, not just trying to come up and take quick shots,” he told a pair of reporters on the heels of the Filipino’s opening Asia Cup Qualifiers victory.
“[E]verybody was trying hard, but they were tentative and we were missing shots we should have made. We were a little overextended defensively. We were allowing guys. All the things we weren’t supposed to be doing, we were doing in that first half.”
The Philippines raced to a 9-0 start but found Hong Kong breathing down their necks by the second period.
