Gilas Women climb to No. 39

Gilas Pilipinas Women’s squad improved its world ranking despite falling short in the FIBA World Cup Pre-Qualifying Tournament in Kigali last week.

From No. 40, the Filipinas are now at No. 39 in the world ranking of the International Basketball Federation while climbing to No. 7 in the Asian ranking as well.

Australia remains the top Asian team as it soared to No. 2 in the world ranking while China slid to No. 4 but stayed at No. 2 in Asia.

Japan, meanwhile, remained the third-best country in Asia despite dropping to No. 10 in the FIBA rankings.

The Filipinas had a solid performance in the pre-qualifiers despite suffering a heartbreaking 74-77 loss to Brazil in the opener.

But after that, Gilas Women were routed in their next two matches as they suffered a 60-97 loss to Hungary on Tuesday and a 62-87 defeat to Senegal on Thursday to bomb out of competition.

Head coach Pat Aquino said the girls’ grit and never-say-die attitude earned them the respect of the opponents.

“I think we have shown also how we play, a Filipino way of playing basketball through them. That’s what’s beautiful about it,” Aquino said.

“By the sounds or by the comments of the press and people around FIBA, they’re saying that they were impressed and they were really cheering for us on how we play our hearts out every game and not giving up, even with the disadvantage of playing with bigger opponents.”

Gilas Women, however, scored some sort of a consolation after veteran Jack Animam landed a deal with FCC UAV Arad in Romania.