CHANGSHA, China: Gilas Pilipinas ran roughshod over a second straight foe on Friday night, but that didn’t exactly mean that the Filipinos drew praises from coach Tab Baldwin after.

“If erratic is the form that we are looking for, then we are pretty well placed right here,” Baldwin said despite a 110-64 victory by the Filipinos over Kuwait in a Fiba Asia Group A match that nearly got out of hand with less than a minute left at the Changsha Social Work College gym here.

Team Philippines has now won its last two games by an average of 48.5 points as the Filipinos have now gathered a lot of momentum and confidence going into the second round of the preliminaries starting Sunday morning.

But Baldwin talked that way because the last two swashbuckling victories came on the heels of a monumental collapse on Wednesday morning when the Filipinos bowed to tournament newcomer Palestine, 75-73, an upset which now ranks as one of the biggest if not the biggest in Asia.

He did, of course, commended his players for the effort, and remained confident of the fighting heart of the Filipinos.

“We’ve seen them rise to the occasion when the expectations are high,” Baldwin told international media. “We have high expectations for the next round and the remainder of the tournament. And we expect to rise to that challenge.”

The Philippines, Palestine and Hong Kong will advance to the second round and will merge with Group A’s Japan, India and defending champion Iran to make up Group E.

Gilas will be playing the members of the other group once after having carried over a record of 1-1 into the next phase.

Results of games against teams that were eliminated in the first round were not carried over. After those three second round assignments, only the top four teams in the merged group will advance to the knockout system.

China topped its group, towing South Korea and Jordan into the next stage, in that order.

The Chinese, who have three players 7-feet and above and are bannered by former Milwaukee Buck Yi Jilian, the Jordanians and the Koreans will form Group E together with Qatar, Kazakhstan and Lebanon.

Chinese Taipei was a Final Four protagonist in 2013 that didn’t make it past the first round, bowing out in the Qatar group after taking losses to the Qataris and Lebanese.

The Philippines opened up hot against the Kuwaitis, building commanding leads early and was on the way to another easy win until a commotion erupted in the final 48 seconds.

Ranidel de Ocampo, the hard-nosed Filipino veteran, gave Abdulaziz Alhamadi a bloodied mouth because of an elbow during a rugged play for possession.

No fouls were called, which made tempers flare even more as the Kuwaiti forward charged at the referee showing his busted kisser before turning his ire on De Ocampo in front of the Philippine bench.

“Your player started it, when he hit our player and the score (lead of the Philippines) was already very big,” said Kuwait coach Khaled Yousef, obviously referring to De Ocampo.

“He (Alhamadi) was hitting my teammates, doing it practically the whole game,” De Ocampo said in Filipino when interviewed on the way back to the team bus.

“I took it upon myself to protect my teammates,” added the 6-foot-5 De Ocampo, who has also had run-ins with several others in the past, including Hamed Haddadi of Iran.

“We’re in a war here,” he went on. “He (Alhamadi) was dishing it out and he should have been ready to take shots as well.”

Terrence Romeo snapped out of his shooting funk and dropped 19 points, with Jason Castro adding 16.

All of Baldwin’s 12 men contributed offensively, giving Baldwin the luxury of resting some of his main guns and letting his role players finish the job.

Abdulrahman Alshammari paced the Kuwaitis with 15 points.

Andray Blatche played just 18 minutes and was good for eight points eight rebounds.

“I don’t have enough to say about the game,” Baldwin said. “It’s kind of an uneventful game in a basketball standpoint. “