Gilas suffers first loss to Lithuanian club The Philippine national men’s basketball team dropped its first assignment in its training tour in Lithuania, succumbing to LSU-Baltai, 89-86, on Sunday night (Monday morning Manila time). The SMART-Gilas Pilipinas training pool had won its first two assignments in its Europe sojourn, but entered its third match with a warning. “Not as tall as the last 2 but said to be a team of shooters,” wrote Gilas assistant Josh Reyes on his Instagram account before the match. LSU-Kasai, the same club that discovered former NBA center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, lived up to their billing, making 15 three-pointers compared to just 11 shots from inside the arc. “Got our first loss today to this great shooting team. We will face similar teams in fiba-Asia. Got to take the lessons to heart. Focus also wasn’t all there,” wrote Reyes after the game. The Philippine team earlier booked victories over Klaipedos Neptunas and Jazz-Diremta. Gilas coach Chot Reyes noted that the team is entering a critical juncture in its camp. “Just like that week 1 is done. 9 practices, 3 games. Now d tediousness, homesickness & fatigue are kicking in. How do we react?” he wrote on Twitter. In an earlier interview with InterAKTV, he noted that he expects the team to go through great difficulty during the camp. “My belief is if you’re training, you have to train against superior competition. Better skilled, better height and you can only get that in places like Europe, in this case, Lithuania.” interaksyon/interaktv/gilas-suffers-first-loss-to-lithuanian-club
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:29:06 +0000