Gilas Pilipinas ended its mini-camp in Estonia with another loss, falling short against Finland, 89-85, early Thursday morning (Manila time) at the Kalevi Sport Hall in Tallinn.
While Finland is ranked 13th in the latest FIBA rankings, to be clear this is very likely not the same team they will send to the World Cup in August. Only one player - point guard Severi Kaukiainen - was in the lineup for their final European Qualifiers game against Germany last February.
Five quick thoughts on the game and what lies ahead for Gilas in their European boot camp:
Chot still 'very happy' with the results
After Gilas lost to Estonia's U21 team by 10, coach Chot Reyes said he was still "very happy" with the team's performance. It was no different after the Finland game.
"I was very happy with our effort, very happy with the game," Reyes said in an interview with Carlo Pamintuan that was posted on the official Facebook page of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas. "It's obvious that we're still far from being in any competitive game shape. But we are not supposed to be in game shape yet at this point because we have to make sure that we peak at the right time. We don't want to peak too early and burn out in the end. So that's all part of the process, and I'm very happy. ...
"Definite metrics coming into this game. No. 1 was to cut down our turnovers. We had 23 yesterday and we wanted to cut that down and today we were able to cut it down by eight. We finished with 15 assists to our 15 turnovers, so we were able to up our assist-turnover ratio to 1:1 as against yesterday's ratio which is a negative. So I think that was a good sign that we played better today. We shot better as well from two points and three points."
Gilas bigs still struggling
It's tough to win a game when you give up 29 offensive boards and 22 second-chance points. Finland actually had more offensive rebounds than defensive rebounds (26), a rarity in a basketball game. To be fair, many of those offensive boards were off long bounces, a result of Finland taking 42 attempts from beyond the arc.
But it's also clear June Mar Fajardo and Japeth Aguilar are still far from game shape. Fajardo had a better offensive game with 10 points, but grabbed just four boards and couldn't stop Finland's guards and wings from attacking the paint. Aguilar fared slightly better with six rebounds and one blocked shot, but still hasn't shown his trademark explosiveness around the rim.
The only other natural big on the roster, Poy Erram, played sparingly again as Reyes is reportedly fast-tracking the conditioning of Aguilar and Fajardo. The other two bigs with the team, AJ Edu and Ange Kouame, still haven't seen action. Edu is working his way back from an injury but should be ready going forward.
"We got really beat up on the boards," Reyes admitted. "We got outrebounded by almost 20 boards, most of it on offensive rebounds. We gave up 26 (it was 29) offensive rebounds, and that's really going to be a continuing cause of concern because of the size of all of the teams that we're playing. So that's something that we need to continue to work on."
Where have all the shooters gone?
Gilas took just 14 attempts from 3-point land, making just five, numbers that would have been lower if Scottie Thompson hadn't taken and made two quick triples near the end that made the final score more respectable. Dwight Ramos was the only player who attempted more than five, but he went 1-for-6. It was obvious that the Gilas guards had trouble against bigger defenders, but the offense also wasn't setting up too many outside shots.
It also doesn't help that the pool's three best shooters -- RR Pogoy, Jordan Heading and Ray Parks -- all aren't with the team. But on the plus side, Thompson's return from back spams certainly helped, and Rhenz Abando (8 points in 11 minutes) has been given a chance to show his stuff and he hasn't disappointed.
"I thought that Scottie to be able to play today was huge," Reyes noted. "I thought he gave us a huge lift, a huge contribution. Rhenz came out really well."
Those poor starts
In a virtual replay of their Estonia game, Gilas came out flat and struggled against the non-stop pressure defense to fall behind 26-11 after the first quarter. Against Estonia, they were behind 29-14 after one.
Thompson admitted that they've been caught by surprise by the early aggressiveness.
"International (play), first two minutes they're already playing like it's the second half," he said in Tagalog. "Hopefully we can get to that style of play as well."
Reyes has a couple of other theories.
"We have to take a look at our warm-up protocols, No. 1. No. 2, we have to take a look at the starting lineup. We have to make some changes there. But I think it's really just a matter of getting used to the FIBA pace. We're still on PBA pace, and that's why these games are so valuable to us. We can explain it all we want, but unless they actually feel it and experience it, how hard these teams start from the get-go...that's why we play these games.
"I'm just so happy that the two teams that we've played so far have really pressed us from end to end. And our players never get that pressure, whether it's in the PBA or Japan or in Korea."
On to the next stop. After Estonia, Gilas will fly to Lithuania for more training and tune-up games. The activity level is expected to ramp up a few more notches.
"When we get to Lithuania, we're gonna go two-a-days precisely because of the goals that we are trying to achieve," Reyes said. "We'll play at least four more games in ten days. Those are going to be good tests for us.
"Right now, we're just continuing to get up our conditioning level, No. 1. No. 2 , all we're doing now defensively is the fundamentals. Technique, mechanics, making sure everyone is on the same page, understanding our terminologies and what we want to do. From here we can now build on it. We can run some schemes, we can run some different looks, but right now it's all about putting in the fundamentals and mechanics on getting on the same page with the players."