MANILA, Philippines — Gilas Pilipinas coach Tim Cone expects Indonesia, a squad bannered by two familiar faces in coach Rajko Toroman and import Denzel Bowles, as well as Thailand to be quite a handful for Team Phl in the road to the most cherished basketball gold in the coming Southeast Asian Games.
Toroman, the Serbian coach who called the shots for the original Gilas team and served as part of the Petron Blaze and Barako Bull think tank, recently signed on to boost the Indons’ stock in international play. Bowles, for his part, has been a regular import in the PBA, winning a title and Best Import award in 2012, and is set to bring his act as Indonesia’s naturalized player.
“Indonesia, they’re co-hosting the FIBA World Cup (in 2023) and they don’t have the automatic berth like the Philippines does so they have to showcase themselves in this tournament (SEA Games) and the Asian Games to show that they’re worthy to get the hosting exemption because they haven’t been guaranteed (of a slot to the WC).
“So they’re trying to build their program, showcase themselves to the FIBA World and so we expect them to really come (out hard),” said Cone.
Toroman steered Gilas to fourth in the 2011 FIBA Asia Championships and brought Iran to the 2008 Olympics.
“We all know Rajko, we know how great a coach he is,” said Cone.
Then there’s Bowles.
“We’ll need an import stopper,” said Cone.
He also cited Thailand as another tough challenger. Two years ago in Kuala Lumpur, the Filipinos had to dig deep and uncork a fiery windup to survive the pesky Thais, 81-74.
“In the last SEA Games, we had a lot of trouble with Thailand. We barely beat Thailand,” he said.
Cone has tapped six of his Barangay Ginebra players to form the nucleus of the Gilas SEAG squad and added the comebacking Jayson Castro and other veterans like June Mar Fajardo into the fold for this mission.