Yes,
we lost. Yes, we were expected to win. Yes, it’s a historic upset. But none of
those things matter now. What matters is that Gilas learns from this game and
uses those lessons to get better (hopefully, in time for tomorrow’s game).
That
being said, here are three things that contributed to our loss to Palestine.
OUTREBOUNDED
Palestine,
despite having a 6’8” center, outrebounded the Philippines 58-53. What’s worse
is that Palestine totally owned Gilas on the offensive boards, with a 23-17
advantage. Those come out to 12 potential second-chance points. In a two point
loss, denying them 2 of those offensive rebounds could have won us the game.
The
Gilas big men actually rebounded well, led by Blatche with 12, Abueva collaring
8, Thoss with 6, and de Ocampo with 5. But it’s the box-out system that seems
to be broken, with Palestine’s Rebound Brothers, the Sakakinis, getting 6 offensive rebounds each. Their big
O-reb numbers were aided by our defensive scheme, something I will get into in
the next paragraph.
