No moral victories: Gilas suffers painful loss, vows to bounce back vs Aussies

Game tomorrow:

(Mall of Asia Arena)

7:30 p.m. — Philippines vs Australia

An almost-but-not-quite result is unacceptable to Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone.

Putting up a gallant stand in front of the home crowd may sound valiant, but without a win at the end is just empty rhetoric.

Cone won’t be the one to romanticize a loss.

Moral victories won’t count as wins anyway in Gilas’ pursuit of a fourth straight entry on the world basketball stage.

“I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’m happy about our performance,” Cone said after Gilas suffered a stinging 66-69 loss to New Zealand in its first of two 2027 FIBA World Cup Asian Qualifiers second window homestands Thursday night at the Mall of Asia Arena.

The Filipinos saw their two-game win streak in Group A come to a screeching halt after their last-ditch attempt to salvage the match via overtime ended with Dwight Ramos’ halfcourt desperation three-point heave rattled off the rim at the final buzzer.

“The bottom line is we’re not going to feel good or take pride in the fact that we got close or we almost won or whatever. Bottom line, we’re here to win and we didn’t do that,” Cone said.

Ramos finished with 16 points and pulled down eight rebounds to lead Gilas. CJ Perez had 15 markers while Juan Gomez de Liaño debuted with 10 points for Gilas, which barely felt the presence of naturalized player Justin Brownlee.

It was a bad night for Brownlee after submitting a paltry four points on a terrible 2-of-10 field goal shooting. He scored his first basket with nine minutes left in the third quarter and made his second and last bucket in the final period.

Cone credited the Tall Blacks for doing a great job defending not only Brownlee, who was averaging 21.0 points per game coming into the game, but also in disrupting Gilas’ offensive flow.

Gilas shot 32 percent from the field (26-of-80) with only even three-pointers made.

“And I hate saying that, well, we didn’t make shots because there’s more to the game than just making shots. And that’s an easy explanation. But if you’re saying that, it’s usually because you’re not getting good shots,” the seasoned tactician said.

“And we didn’t get the shots that we wanted. We didn’t get the flow that we wanted. Credit goes to them because they defended well as well.”

Gilas cut an 11-point deficit in the fourth quarter to just two, 68-66, off a Ramos putback with eight ticks left.

Reuben Te Rangi was sent to the line and split his crucial charities with seven seconds left, enough to give Gilas one last chance.

Big man Quentin Millora-Brown secured the board on the missed second freethrow attempt of Te Rangi and immediately handed it over to Ramos for a potential game-tying three.

Ramos was able to let loose his shot taken in transition, with time winding down, but didn’t hit its mark.

“The bottom line, we’re not going to take any pride in almost winning or making the game close or whatever. You know, we showed up to win. And we didn’t do that tonight,” Cone lamented.

Gilas, which two years ago beat the Kiwis in a 93-89 shocker in the FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers on the same venue, looked ready for war in the first half when it erected an early seven-point lead.

Although the Tall Blacks recovered and took a 10-point advantage, the home team was able to erase that with a stirring 10-0 rally to knot the game at 37 heading into the halftime break.

The Kiwis clamped down on defense in the third quarter and limited the Filipinos to just nine points to build an 11-point lead, 57-46, entering the payoff period.

Max Darling finished with 11 points, Sam Menengga had a double-double of 10 points and 14 rebounds while Alex McNaught got 10 markers as New Zealand barged into the win column for a 1-2 win-loss mark.

Holding a 2-1 record, Gilas will get another crack at securing a seat in the second round when it hosts unbeaten Australia tomorrow at the same venue.

The second round-bound Boomers return to Manila for the first time since the infamous Philippine Arena brawl against Gilas during the FIBA World Cup Asian Qualifier back on 2 July 2018.

Cone hopes Gilas will have a better showing and actually win.

“I hate to say it, but we’re going to continue to learn as we go forward. But again, I just don’t want to get into this, ‘We almost won, we almost did that.’ We don’t want to play that game with ourselves. We want to win games,” he said.