Gilas Pilipinas came close to beating Georgia, but its comeback fell short as the nationals absorbed a tight 96-94 defeat in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament at Arena Riga in Latvia on Thursday night, Manila time.
Still, the Philippine side advanced to the semifinals due to its superior quotient over the Georgians, who needed to beat the Filipinos by more than 18 points to progress.
Justin Brownlee led the way for the nationals, who needed a huge third quarter to erase a 20-point deficit against Georgia.
Dwight Ramos, Carl Tamayo, and Calvin Oftana were also instrumental in their third-quarter push when they started knocking down their threes.
Gilas was reeling in the first quarter when the Georgians raced to an early 16-0 lead. Georgia used fluid ball movement and accurate three-point shooting to widen the gap to 20 in the second quarter.
Things went awry for the nationals when Kai Sotto got hurt after one of Georgia’s big men fell on top of him with 6:42 left in the second period.
Georgia, however, started to lose steam in the second half just as Gilas’ outside shooting started to click.
The No. 23rd-ranked Georgians, however, managed to hold on to a two-point difference at the end of regulation.
Gilas enters the knockout rounds as the second seed and will next face any of Montenegro, Brazil, or Cameroon.
The post Gilas moves to OQT semis despite narrow defeat to Georgia first appeared on Fastbreak.
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