TAIPEI: Gilas Pilipinas ended its Jones Cup stint here on a smashing note on Sunday afternoon, and will take valuable lessons learned into the tournament to which the squad was built for.

The Filipinos recovered from a lousy start to rip a young Chinese Taipei-B squad to shreds, 96-67, to finish second behind Iran, but coach Tab Baldwin later on said that there are a lot of positives the team can take for the Fiba-Asia Championship that starts in less than three weeks.

“It is respectable,” Baldwin said of the second place finish, considering that the squad was built just last August 3 and that it clashed with four national teams – Japan, Iran, South Korea and Chinese Taipei-A – that have been playing together for a longer period of time.

“It’s not really the result you want, but you take the positives out of it,” he continued. “We came here primarily, like Iran, Korea and Japan, to get better for the Fiba-Asia (in Changsha, China), and we have achieved that.

“We will simply take the positives out of our Jones Cup experience.”

The team flies back home to Manila on Monday morning, takes the rest of the day off and then plunges back to work again the following day.

A four-nation tournament, the MVP Cup named after tycoon Manny V. Pangilinan, will be the next tournament that Gilas will play in where the Filipinos will have a return bout with Chinese Taipei-A and the Wellington Saints, teams they beat in the Jones Cup.

That event will start on Sept. 11.

A fourth team, Lebanon, has backed out at the last minute and organizers are talking to representatives of the USA Select-Overtake squad which the Filipinos also nipped here on Saturday, 78-74.

“The week after the MVP Cup will be most important to us,” Baldwin said. “It is very well-documented that we are late (in our preparations) and that we need to cram.”

Cramming, Baldwin said, would require that the team be secluded after the MVP Cup where he will subject the players to twice-a-day practice sessions and make them bond even more.

“We (coaches) will not kill them,” he explained. “But there are a lot of things that we need to catch on.”

Baldwin also said that the rigors of a nine-day tournament where teams play eight games can take its toll on players. “The negative for us in this tournament is that I have players who are fatigued and injured.”

Calvin Abueva almost became a casualty against Taipei-B, falling hard on his back after a hard bump and stepping out of the floor near the end of the first quarter. He would never return to the game.

But before he left the game, he gave the Nationals the boost of energy that they needed, coming off the bench with less than two minutes gone and the Filipinos trailing, 2-10.

The 6-foot-1 Abueva’s final basket was a layup that gave the Philippines a 21-20 lead which Gilas never lost. The Filipinos led by as large as 30.

Gilas was led by the 22 points of Gary David. Jason Castro tossed in 15 and Moala Tautuaa also came off the bench to shoot 12 and grab nine rebounds.

Marc Pingris and Dondon Hontiveros sat it out, while Terrence Romeo missed a third straight game because of a swollen left ankle. Baldwin said that Romeo will be available for the MVP Cup.

Tautuaa and Abueva were the only players in the roster that Baldwin played the entire eight-game schedule.

Meanwhile, Baldwin said that the Jordan Clarkson case is still “in suspended animation” after Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss and general manager Mitch Kupchak gave the decision-making to coach Byron Scott.

“So it’s in suspended animation,” Baldwin told Filipino reporters here. “We don’t know anything, who knows? Maybe the (Lakers) coaches are under instruction, maybe it’s really the coaches’ decision.

“We can speculate all we want, but I am not much of a speculator.”

Gilas, however, will welcome back naturalized center Andray Blatche in Manila also on Monday. Blatche will be flying in from the United States where he attended the funeral of his uncle.