MANILA, Philippines – Life without Kai Sotto has been a bumpy road for Gilas Pilipinas.
And the national team needs to figure out how to survive without the 7-foot-3 star soon as fiercer competition awaits the Philippines in the FIBA Asia Cup to be hosted in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in August.
“We lost obviously a key, key player for a year in terms of Kai Sotto,” said head coach Tim Cone. “We’re still trying to adjust how to play without him.”
“That is [one of] the things we’re going to be talking about and thinking about as we go into the FIBA Asia Cup.”
Gilas Pilipinas has lost four of its five games since Sotto went down with a knee injury in a Japan B. League game in January.
The 22-year-old big man underwent surgery and is expected to sit out six months for a full recovery.
Without Sotto, the Philippines beat Qatar and suffered double-digit losses to Lebanon and Egypt in the Doha International Cup then wrapped up the FIBA Asia Cup Qualifiers with back-to-back defeats after a 4-0 start.
Playing a pair of road games in the third and final window, the Filipinos absorbed a 91-84 loss to Chinese Taipei on February 20 and an 87-70 defeat to New Zealand on Sunday, February 23.
While the Doha camp may have done more harm than good when it came to Philippines’ Asia Cup Qualifiers campaign, Cone hopes it will pay dividends down the road.
“These windows are so short. We’re together so little. We were able to do a Doha trip before we came here just to try to get more time together and play more games,” said Cone. “It probably hurt us more than it helped us in terms of being ready for Taiwan and New Zealand.”
“But we’re trying to look at it at a bigger picture in terms of the FIBA Asia coming up, because we know we’re not going to have much time, maybe eight, 10 days at most to come together and prepare for that tournament.”
Other qualified teams for the Asia Cup include Australia, Korea, New Zealand, China, Japan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, and Lebanon. – Rappler.com