Gilas Pilipinas head coach Yeng Guiao said there is plenty of room for improvement following the Nationals’ narrow 92-98 loss to Jordan’s men’s national team, Monday evening at the Meralco Gym in Pasig City.
Gilas were down by as many as 12 early on, but managed to wipe that out and even led by six in the second. But the Jordanians – spearheaded by the legendary Zaid Abbas – were too much to handle as their experience came to play.
“We’re a little bit rusty. There’s a lot of room for improvement,” said Guiao. “We’ve had some good stretches but we also had some bad stretches. Our execution is still not that good.
“We have to fine-tune our execution on both ends.”
Guiao only used 12 men in the tune-up, as Stanley Pringle and the Barangay Ginebra San Miguel men – LA Tenorio, Japeth Aguilar, Greg Slaughter, and Scottie Thompson – sat out as they only began practicing last Sunday.
But for Guiao likes Gilas’ chemistry so far, even if he has yet to utilize everyone in the pool.
“I think the good sign is the chemistry,” said the veteran coach. “I think it’s good, except that we just need a little bit more time siguro.
“We have about less than two weeks to go, so I think that’s enough time for us to be in competitive shape.”
Gilas will be facing Jordan anew on Wednesday, and with possibly newer faces on the team. For the decorated Guiao, he hopes that his wards will be able to show their wares better compared to Monday night.
“Dapat magpakita na tayo ng improvement from today to Wednesday,” he said.
“These games are learning experiences for us.”
“So, what we want to do or what we want to achieve is to be able to see where our shortcomings are, where our weaknesses are. So, we can work on them in pratices,” Guiao added.
Still, Guiao is not dead set on the lineup that will compete in the series finale.
“Now, ‘di natin ginamit yung apat na galing ng Ginebra kasi isang beses pa lang sila nakapag-ensayo. Si Stanley arrived late [from the States] also, so he had one session. So I don’t think that’s enough na makapagpakita sila in today’s game,” he shared.
“But they’ll practice again with us tomorrow and we have a shoot-around on Wednesday morning . At least nakapag-ensayo na sila ng dalawa o tatlong beses, kaya siguro pwede na sila gamitin sa Wednesday.”
