Janine Pontejos Makes FIBA 3x3 History for Philippines.

In the end, the best man left standing was a Filipina.

Yes, the smallest of the snipers, Janine Pontejos, stood tallest when the chips were down by scoring 14 points in 41.86 seconds to finally give them Philippines its first gold medal in the senior division* of the FIBA 3x3 tournament.

Here are three things that helped Pontejos win the shootout:

1) Homecourt advantage - There's nothing like playing at home and Pontejos definitely felt the love from the home crowd, which helped prop up her confidence.

2) Familiarity - Technically, all courts should be the same. But there's always that part where players have to get used to which parts of the courts have unexpected distractions, like bright lights, or lots of unexpected movements or even just distracting designs. Pontejos has been taking a lot of shots from the outside during the tournament and did a good job of translating that in-game experience into shootout gold.

3) Perfect timing - Pontejos lucked into a hot streak, when her shooting just leapt into a higher level (for no discerniblereason at all). Eight straight threepointers is world class shooting and it came at the best time possible. (Remember, Pontejos qualified for the finals with a score of 6 points).

Here are the highlights of the Filipina long distance gunner, courtesy of the FIBA 3x3 youtube channel.

Congratulations and THANK YOU!

*Kobe Paras had already given the Philippines 2 gold medals in the slam dunk contest in the U-18 version of the FIBA 3x3 competitions.