GILAS Pilipinas yielded an 80-90 setback to an eight-man Lithuanian pro selection in Tuesday night’s friendly in Kaunas, Lithuania that magnified the Nationals’ urgent need to sharpen up their defensive schemes against tall shooters.
Tomas Zdanavicius, a 6-foot-8 frontliner who plays for Inter Bratislava in the Slovenia league, dropped 25 points on the Filipinos spiked by a six-of-seven three-point-shooting clip to go with seven rebounds and four assists.
Vytautas Sulskis, a 6-foot-7 former Lithuanian league MVP, was also a big thorn on the visitors, producing a 19-9 double-double.
The home squad got off to a 21-5 start and even held a 54-20 lead at one point before Gilas made a late rally to get to within manageable levels.
Justin Brownlee fired 20 with seven boards while Jamie Malonzo had 14-9, June Mar Fajardo netted 13 and Kiefer Ravena shot 10 as the Nationals dropped to 2-3 overall in their Euro camp.
“Overall, we’re not happy with the (game’s) result but I’m very satisfied with the learning, the lessons that we continue to pick up and like I said, that’s why we’re here,” coach Chot Reyes said in an update from the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas.
One such lesson is devising ways to get their defense more effective against Euro bigs.
“This was all part of the process. We wanted to play a team who had five shooters because we wanted to see how we could get June Mar defending the ball screen, pick-and-pops against three-point shooters,” said Mr. Reyes.
He noted that Mr. Fajardo may have scored 10 in the first half but his man, Mr. Zdanavicius, shot 20 in the same stretch.
“So that’s something we need to work on. It’s an area that unless we really experience it, we won’t really know how to address it,” Mr. Reyes said.
“Again, (a) learning experience for us. It’s now upon us to come to practice and figure out a way to defend a three-point-shooting, outside-shooting big. We knew that this is the kind of player we’re going to face. It’s not only June Mar, it has to be everyone rotating and being able to stop that.”
With Ange Kouame finally suiting up and contributing four markers in six minutes, Mr. Reyes also took the opportunity to tweak his combinations. He placed Brownlee at No. 3 while sliding Japeth Aguilar to No. 4 after playing 5. — Olmin Leyba
