THE OLYMPIC DREAM HAS ENDED
By Ronnie Nathanielsz
PhilBoxing.com
Mon, 30 Jul 2007
The Philippines dream of re-entering the Olympic Games has ended following an 84-76 loss to Jones Cup champions Jordan who along with undefeated Iran advanced to the quarter finals of the FIBA Asia Men’s Basketball Championship in Tokushima, Japan.
Ousted from the Group which national coach Chot Reyes branded “The Group of Death” aside from the Philippines was defending champions China who failed to win a game in Group A. The nationals were relegated to the consolation pool where the best finish it can hope for will be ninth. They play Syria in the first game at 9:00 a.m. today
It was a painful loss for a gallant RP team whose players gave of their best with Asi Taulava playing the game of his life and Gabe Norwood showing glimpses of his true potential. An injury to Kerby Raymundo in the very first minutes of the game hurt the nationals cause as he hobbled around whenever he was fielded while injury-prone Danny Seigle saw very limited action.
The much taller and bigger Jordanians also got away with some clear roughhousing tactics against even the little men like Jimmy Alapag which the referees seemed to ignore while at the same time making what veteran TV analyst Andy Jao said were “lots of questionable calls against us.”
The Philippines took the first quarter 18-13 on a buzzer-beating triple by JayJay Helterbrand and some great inside play by Taulava. Back-to-back baskets by Norwood including a thunderous slam dunk and a nice inside move by Eric Menk gave the nationals a 24-15 lead with 6:30 remaining in the second quarter. The Jordanians who were controlling the boards had a hard time scoring inside because of the stifling defense of the Filipinos but they soon began to move the ball around and found the range from three point territory to trim the lead o just two at the half, 35-33.
The third quarter saw a see-saw battle evolve as the lead changed hands with almost every play but with naturalized American Rasheim Wright beginning to get into his rhythm the Filipinos were down by three 54-51 going into the final ten minutes. A useless offensive foul by Norwood and a second offensive foul by Mark Caguiao plus an uncharacteristically poor shot by Jimmy Alapag who was obviously a very tired player after his heroics in the previous games forced Reyes to sue for time.
The Jordanians scored inside on two air balls as their big men continued to dominate inside while Zaid Al Khas and Sam Daghlas began to bury threes with impunity to give Jordan a 71-59 lead with just under two minutes remaining. Caguioa fouled out with 1:41 to play and Dondon Hontiveros in one last gasp buried two triples to cut the lead to 78-70 but a dribbling violation called on Helterbrand and a traveling call on Hontiveros took the game away and despite one big three by Ren Ren Ritualo who hardly saw action the nationals dream of keeping its hopes of qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Olympics alive was shattered despite five desperate triples in the last two minutes even as Jordan ran down the clock.
Reyes took full responsibility with the loss saying “I personally picked the players and the coaching staff. We made the best possible preparation. If we didn’t land in the toughest group in this competition we could have made the next round. Reyes said the two major misfortunes that told heavily on the nationals failed bid were “the quirk of the draw and the technical foul called by the Greek referee in our game against Iran.”
Leading scorers:
JORDAN - Wright 24, Daghles 22, Alkhas 18
RP - Taulava 14, Alapag 10, Hontiveros 9, Caguiao 9, Norwood 9
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ronnie Nathanielsz.
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