The road to the FIBA U17 Basketball World Cup in Turkey will not be easy for Gilas Pilipinas following a sluggish campaign in the preliminaries of the FIBA U16 Asia Cup in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

After posting a 1-2 win-loss record in the group phase, the Filipinos finished Group B at No. 3 behind unbeaten New Zealand and Chinese Taipei, which wrapped up its bid with a 2-1 card following a 107-102 win over Indonesia late Tuesday.

With that, the Philippines will be facing the No. 2 team in Group A — Bahrain — on Thursday at 11:30 a.m. at the MBank Arena while Pool B second seed Chinese Taipei will tackle Pool A third seed Lebanon. Group A and B topnotchers Australia and New Zealand, meanwhile, will go straight to the quarterfinals.

But the battle against the Bahrainis will not be easy.

The West Asian squad is being carried by the powerhouse duo of Hassan Oshobuge Abdulkadir and Somto Patrick Onoduenyi.

Abdulkadir and Onoduenyi have delivered impressive numbers, posting double-double averages in the group phase to underscore their dominance in this prestigious continental meet. Abdulkadir is averaging 22.5 points and 15.0 rebounds while Onoduenyi is norming 21.3 points and 16.0 rebounds per game.

On the contrary, Gilas Pilipinas’ leading scorer is Prince Cariño with 12.7 rebounds per game while leading rebounder is Brian Orca Jr. with 9.3 rebounds per game, highlighted by 13-rebound efforts against Chinese Taipei and Indonesia.

All in all, the Bahrainis have been scoring and rebounding well with 76 points and 51.3 rebounds compared to the boys of Gilas coach LA Tenorio, who are averaging 67 points and 47 rebounds per game. The Filipinos, though, are moving the ball well with 18 assists per game compared to the Bahrainis’ 15.

The Philippines will also enter the match with a mental edge after winning their past two matches against Bahrain by an average winning margin of 28.5 points — a 98-58 decision on 29 October 2015 in Indonesia with SJ Belangel and Harvey Pagsanjan as key players and a 62-45 outcome on 21 November 2009 in Malaysia with Kiefer Ravena and Kevin Ferrer as main players.

Should the Filipinos prevail over the Bahrainis, they will face the top team in Group C in powerhouse China in the quarterfinals.

The Chinese appear indestructible after crushing Mongolia by 58, 103-25; Malaysia by 56, 100-44; and South Korea by 16, 97-81 for an average winning margin of 53.3 points.

Yizhaojie Zhang, a 6-foot-7 forward from Shanghai Jiushi Club, has been leading the Chinese in scoring with 19 points per game while 6-foot-9 Ziyi Zhang is dominating the shaded lanes with 12.7 rebounds per game to go with his 12.7 scoring average.

Should the Filipinos pull off a miracle, then they will punch one of the four available tickets to the U17 World Cup, marking their return to the prestigious event after the group of Kieffer Alas, Bonn Daja, and Champ Arejola qualified in 2024.