The Meralco Bolts settled for fourth place at the FIBA Asia Champions Cup after falling short against Korean team SK Knights, 91-87.
Allen Durham, one of Meralco's two imports for the tournament, remains proud of how the team competed.
"I definitely feel like we competed hard and represented the Philippines well," Durham told ESPN5. "It's not easy going into a tournament like this undermanned, but we didn't use that as an excuse and we played every team hard."
The Bolts didn't have Fil-Americans Chris Newsome and Cliff Hodge in the tournament. Both players were declared ineligible by FIBA the night before they were to play Thailand club team Mono Vampire. Veterans Ranidel de Ocampo and Jared Dillinger also didn't join the club championship due to injuries.
"The competition was a good level. I believe we would have been one of the top teams if we had some of our key players like Newsome, Hodge, Dillinger, RDO. But even without those guys, we were in every game and had chances to win," Durham said.
Durham averaged 21.8 points, 12.8 rebounds and 3.4 assists in the tournament.
Meralco dropped its first two games to Mono Vampire and Alvark Tokyo, but managed to rebound into the semis after blasting Al-Riyadi of Lebanon 96-63 in the final day of group stage play over the weekend. The victory ended Al-Riyadi's back-to-back title hopes while setting Meralco up for the knockout semis duel with tournament favorite Petrochimi-Iran.
Meralco hung with Petrochimi-Iran in a tight game marked by 21 lead changes, a big surprise for the Iranians, who dominated the opposition by their average winning margin of 29 points in the group stage.
"Iran had 21 offensive rebounds against us and our imports got into foul trouble," Meralco assistant coach Luigi Trillo said. "But then again Iran Petrochimi is a very big, athletic team and we got the work down in the end."
"But overall though, considering that four of our other players not here, Anjo Caram playing with a second degree sprain and Daimon [Stone] still new, we played Iran very, very well. Our game plan was sound and it came down to the last two minutes of the game," Trillo said.