THE young Gilas Pilipinas men’s national basketball team may have suffered a couple of setbacks in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Belgrade but head coach Tab Baldwin all those will ultimately prepare them for a comeback in the tournaments to come.

The Gilas’ dreams of making it to the Tokyo Olympics got shattered by the Dominican Republic with a resounding 67-94 beating on Thursday morning. Hopes were high that Filipino dribblers would do well in their second game especially after they gave Serbia a huge scare before losing, 76-83. Still, Baldwin said in a talk with Tiebreaker Times that they would take this loss and use the lessons from it to get better.

“We will now hit home with lessons in our pocket,” said Baldwin. “We’ll take this on the chin, and we’ll try to learn our lessons and build for the future.”

Pressed for an assessment of their campaign, Baldwin shared that it was a mixed bag.

“A sort of a mixed campaign here with a decent performance against Serbia and a disappointing performance tonight,” Baldwin answered.

“There are so many lessons. Both lessons on how to handle measured success, how to handle complacency, how to handle expectations, how to handle your opposition, various styles of play, how to adapt,” he added.

The biggest lesson, though, Baldwin quipped, is something that they all know by now—they have a lot more growing and development to do.

“The biggest lesson is something we probably already know: we have a tremendous amount to learn and need to be able to treat measured success, real success, the same as we treat defeat and failure,” shared Baldwin. (JNP)