Gilas brace for friendlies

Gilas Pilipinas head coach Tim Cone finally gets chance to test his squad as it clashes with Alab Pilipinas and a Taiwanese squad in a series of friendly matches.

Cone’s squad will face Alab, bankrolled by San Miguel Beer and being handled by his assistant Jimmy Alapag on 4 and 11 November, and a Taiwanese club on 18 November.

Both Alab and the Taiwan team will be reinforced by two imports, a perfect tune-up as the Philippines will face Southeast Asian teams with naturalized players like Lester Prosper of Indonesia.

The tune-up games, according to Cone, will not be open to fans and media.

“It’s going to be a closed-door game. We won’t allow the fans or press until after the game is over. So, again we’re trying to keep our range right,” Cone said.

“We know there are people out there scouting us and we also want to have total focus because our time is so short. We want to have total focus on coming in and playing and working against the Alab team and not worry about playing for the crowd or the media and try to look good.”

The scheduled friendlies are the Nationals’ real competitive games for the upcoming 30th Southeast Asian Games, which the country will be hosting from 30 November to 11 December.

With the Governors’ Cup still ongoing, Cone said he would be managing the minutes of the players to avoid injury.

“We have to manage their minutes as well. It’s just everything is like a delicate balancing act,” Cone said.

“We wanna come in and do the work. So for the next three Mondays we’ll have some practice games to try and get us prepared.”