THE winning feeling never wanes for Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone.
While his charges stunned the world with a surprise semifinals stint in the FIBA Olympic qualifying tournament in Riga, Cone stressed getting the job done matters most.
“The bottom line is, we just weren’t good enough, and we have to be better. We always tell ourselves that ‘almost’ is not good enough. Almost winning, almost getting there–it’s not enough,” Cone said.
“We have to find a way to get over the hump and actually get there. We didn’t do that,” he added.
The Nationals dropped a sorry 60-71 loss to world No. 12 Brazil three nights back in the Last Four of the OQT that ended their quest for a Paris Olympics berth.
Cone said he intends to keep his 12-man roster in Gilas’ bid for the World Cup in Qatar in 2027 and fight for a slot in the Summer Games four years from now in Los Angeles.
“The whole part of bringing this particular program together, which is different from what we had in the World Cup, is the fact that we are hopefully going to keep these guys together for the next three to four years,” Cone said.
“We will try to keep them together going into the next World Cup.”
The Philippine five will resume its bid in the second window set for Nov. 21 and 24 after it completed a 2-0 sweep of the first round of the Asia Cup qualifiers last February.
Falling short when they were nearly in the Promised Land will not simply hack it.
“Playing these kinds of tournaments where you are playing three games in four days, it gets harder and harder every game. These are the things that we will need to adjust to,” Cone said. “But like I said, we didn’t expect to be here. Once we are here, we expect to win.”
For now, the Filipino cagers need to lick their wounds fast and recover, according to Cone.
“It’s an incredible disappointment for us. We are not going to jump up and down and say ‘Yehey, we did our thing, and everybody was proud of us,’” he said. “Hopefully, it doesn’t get into our mindset. We need to keep pushing and moving forward, getting better.”
Gilas left Latvia with heads held high and while it stings to fail on a dream that’s waiting to be fulfilled for the past 52 years and counting, another chance will come up soon.
