MANILA: The Philippine Team got the endgame it yearned for the whole week. Sad part of it, though, the Nationals failed to make it a happy ending.
A determined PBA All-Star team worked hard on both ends last night and dealt the Philippine Five the first defeat in its existence, a 97-89 drubbing at the Araneta Coliseum which pulled the curtains down on the 2009 PBA All-Star Week.
Imports David Noel and Gabriel Freeman provided the firepower for the All-Stars, who held the Nationals to just six points inside the final 5:34 to pound out the win and give the RP Five the workout it needed.
And though they were in the losing end, the Nationals earned nothing but praises from coach Chot Reyes, who called the shots for the All-Stars and who was the coach of the last PBA-backed Philippine squad.
“Very high, I think at this time, they are at 85-90 for me,” Reyes told reporters when asked to grade the performance of this Philippine crew, which was assembled last December and had practiced only on Mondays since then.
“I think coach Yeng (Guiao) will welcome this game,” Reyes added. “This is exactly how the schedule will be in international competitions where they have three tough games in a row. You really have no rest in between.
“A very important lesson (they have to learn) is that they have to understand that they have to play 3-to-4 great games in a succession.”
Last night’s match was the third in the last five days for the Nationals, who easily defeated the North stars, 98-80, in Victorias, Negros Occidental Wednesday night, before turning surviving the Southerners, 103-99, in Panabo, Davao del Norte last Friday.
The Philippine Team also missed the services of reigning MVP Kelly Williams for the second straight game. The 6-foot-7 Sta. Lucia swingman went down with severe diarrhea after the Victorias game.
“I think is a good workout, a good lesson for us,” the firebrand Guiao said more than 30 minutes after giving his wards a dressing down in the locker room. “It’s a good simulation of what we will face in international competitions.”
“A loss is something that we could use right now. We don’t want to fall into a false sense of security if we had won this game.”
Team Philippines is preparing for three tournaments at the latter half of the year, starting with the Southeast Asian Basketball Association championships in Medan, Indonesia in June before going to the Jones Cup in Taipei the following month.
After that comes the real mission, the Fiba-Asia qualifying in China where the country needs to land in the top three to earn a slot in the World Basketball Championship in Istanbul, Turkey, next year.
The Philippines was in the worlds last in 1978, when it hosted the tournament in Manila , which the former Yugoslavia won. Among the members of that team were Mon Cruz, Padim Israel and Federico ‘Bokyo’ Lauchengco.
To me, this is probably more important than the four wins that we had in our preparations,” Guiao said. “We will draw a lot more lessons from this. I’m still, overall, very positive and very happy with the progress of the team.
“We’re just learning the deeper characters of the players that we have. You test character in adversity. We needed the adversity to test the character of the players.
Kerby Raymundo hit two charities off a Mac Cardona foul and gave the Nationals an 83-78 lead going into the final 5:34, before the points came in trickles for them.
Noel, who finished with 18 markers after ruling the Slam Dunk competition earlier, then shoved the All-Stars ahead to stay, 84-83 with a lay-up before Freeman tossed in two from the stripe.
