Gilas Pilipinas head coach Yeng Guiao rated his wards’ preparedness for the 2019 FIBA World Cup Asian Qualifiers’ sixth window fairly, given the time constraints that restricted the Nationals from preparing much longer.
“Siguro nasa eight na kami. By the time we play, we should be around close to nine, nine-something,” said the seasoned bench strategist. “I don’t think we can be really at a hundred percent dahil kulang naman talaga yung preparation time.
“But if we make ninety percent, we’ll be okay. That’s good enough for us to win games.”
It greatly helped that Gilas had a tune-up game on Friday, thanks to PBA team Meralco Bolts. Guiao had been hoping for a friendly versus any competitive team so that they could test out the system in a better setting.
Gilas showed promise, beating the Bolts, 100-82.
“First, we’d like to thank Meralco for making themselves available for our only tuneup game,” Guiao said. “At least even without Andray [Blatche], we’ve seen that the guys are blending well. We played good defense today.
“We’re hoping we can still improve our defense and be able to translate or apply the things that we’ve practiced in the window, for our games against Qatar and Kazakhstan.”
Gilas is set to fly to Qatar Saturday morning, five days prior to their clash with the Qataris. And for Guiao, he hopes that their time together in Qatar will make up for the time they didn’t have here at home.
“So we hope, kung ano man yung kulang na oras namin dito, ‘di kami masyadong nagkakasama. Doon at least twenty-four hours a day, magkakasama kami doon. So we’ll take full advantage of that,” said the NLEX Road Warriors head coach, who has gone 1-3 in he WCQ.
“We’ll watch the videos, we’ll scout our opponents, and we’ll give out our best on the 21st and the 24th.”
