It took a while but the Gilas Pilipinas finally managed to assert its dominance in the fourth period en route to a 99-87 victory over the PBA Stars squad in their exhibition game late Wednesday night at the Mall of Asia Arena.
The Gilas exploded in the final stanza with a 27-4 run fueled by the play of Gabe Norwood, Jimmy Alapag and Ranidel de Ocampo, who rained down one three-pointer after another for a 94-70 lead after leading by just four, 65-61, at the end of the third canto.
Norwood, Rain or Shine’s prized player, was especially efficient in that stretch, where he scored 10 of his 13 points.
However, national team head coach Chot Reyes was less than pleased with his team’s performance with barely a week to go before the start of the Fiba Asia Men’s Championship as he described the match as a “terrible, terrible game.”
He also called out the lackadaisical play of his point guards LA Tenorio and Jason Castro, who he benched for the entire second half after committing five turnovers in the first 20 minutes of play.
Our point guards were terrible tonight. Jason and LA just didn’t play well. They played as if they didn’t know how to play. They had a really bad ballgame. No excuse,” Reyes was quoted as saying in his interview with the press immediately after the game.
De Ocampo paced the squad with 16 points, Gary David added 14 while Jeff Chan and naturalized player Marcus Douthit added 13 and 11, respectively.
Cebuano big man Junemar Fajardo also figured prominently in the rotation and added eight markers.
The PBA Select squad got 21 from Petron star Arwind Santos, 14 from Rain or Shine’s resident heartthrob Chris Tiu and 13 apiece from Air21’s Nino Canaleta and the Elasto Painter’s Paul Lee.
The Gilas final exhibition assignment will be the Kazahkstan national team in a game slated to start at 7 p.m. today at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum.