It is a win-or-goodbye mode tonight, Aug. 29, 2023, for Gilas Pilipinas in the Fiba World Cup men’s basketball at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City.
We battle powerhouse Italy at 8 p.m., needing literally a miracle to score a near-impossible victory, and nurse the slimmest of hopes in advancing to the next round.
The Filipinos carry the pain of an 87-81 loss to Dominican Republic and an ego-busting 80-70 defeat to Angola going into the Tuesday tiff against the beefy and much heftier Italians.
With those back-to-back losses hounding the Filipinos, the 40th-ranked Gilas will need all the killer punches they can muster to upset the Italians.
And there’s a slight possibility there as the 10th-seeded Italy can still be licking its wounds and hurting remorsefully from that 87-82 loss to the 23rd-rated Dominican Republic on Sunday, Aug. 27.
That resulted in Dominican Republic becoming the sudden leader in Group A with an impregnable 2-0 card.
With Italy’s loss coupled with Angola’s morale-boosting 80-70 triumph over Gilas on Sunday, the standings got muddled up.
Italy and Angola are now tied for second at similar 1-1, win-loss cards, with Gilas fourth and last at 0-2.
But all is not lost for Gilas.
Should Gilas achieve the miracle of a win over Italy at 8 p.m. on Aug. 29, coupled with a victory by Dominican Republic over Angola in the 4 p.m. opener, a three-way logjam at 1-2 will ensue among Gilas, Italy and Angola.
The tie will be broken via a quotient system wherein the team with the highest statistical points joins Dominican Republic to the second round.
The third and fourth teams will drop to the Classification Round reserved for the lowest two teams in the four Group divisions for final positioning.
And what happened to the campaign of Gilas Pilipinas?
Against the Dominican Republic, we lost because the breaks of the game went against us — led by the graduation of five fouls by Jordan Clarkson with still more than three minutes left, the match hanging in the balance.
The loss to Angola was too painful to bear as we blew an 11-point margin, a result of an error-riddled offense caused by Angola’s blinding speed and hot shooting in the endgame.
We can only hope for a miracle now.