Chot takes blame in C. Taipei heartbreaker

MANILA, Philippines –Chinese Taipei took a puncher’s chance and wildly landed the knockout blow in the endgame to deal Gilas Pilipinas a stinging 84-79 loss Saturday night at the end of the preliminaries in the 2014 FIBA Asia Men’s Basketball Championship.

The shocker of a loss left the 19,638 pro-Gilas crowd in attendance and perhaps, millions more at home and in Taiwan heartbroken.

“Allow me to apologize to our countrymen in Taiwan. I would have wanted to win this game for them,” said a dejected Gilas coach Chot Reyes, referring to the Filipino overseas workers in the neighboring country that were victims of abuse following the political tension that stemmed from the death of a Taiwanese fisherman in the Philippine sea territory.

For a while, Gilas appeared headed to score a moral victory.

Then the unthinkable happened as the Taiwanese torched the Filipinos with their sizzling hot shooting from beyond the arc to complete the stunning reversal.

The visitors fired five triples in the payoff period with the last two serving as the daggers.

Big man Wen-Ting Tseng banked in a three-pointer followed by swingman Cheng-Ju Lu’s sixth triple of the game as the Taiwanese climbed back from a 13-point hole and took an 81-77 lead in the final 1:27.

Gilas never recovered from that leading to its first loss in the tournament that did not only hurt the nation’s pride but also might prove costly down the road.

“I should have done a better job rotating and pacing the players,” Reyes blaming himself for the letdown. “We spent a lot of energy in our chase and we didn’t have anything left in the end.”

Gilas started out flat once again falling to a dozen deficit, 6-18, before staging a big run in the middle quarters.

Larry Fonacier exploded off the bench playing a perfect third quarter.  The Talk n Text gunslinger sent the packed arena in frenzied celebration when he unloaded 13 of his team-high 21 points to give the home team a 13-point spread, 68-55.

But the celebration turned out to be premature.

Lu paced the Taiwanese with 22 points anchored on a 6-of-9 three-point shooting. Lei Tien (4-of-8), Chih-Chieh Lin (3-of-6) and Tseng (2-of-3) combined for nine triples.

Marcus Douthit, who finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds, gave the Nationals their last lead on a jumper over naturalized counterpart Quincy Davis, 77-75, before falling to Taipei’s 9-2 killer run.  

Despite the loss, Gilas advanced to the second round along with the Taipei and Jordan to join Group B qualifiers Qatar, Japan and Hong Kong.