By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña
The Gilas Pilipinas men’s national basketball team just dropped eight spots down during the recently released FIBA World rankings.
After a disappointing FIBA Asia Cup outing and a set of sub-par results during the past windows of the FIBA World Cup Asian qualifiers, Gilas is only the world’s no. 41 ranked basketball nation.
The Filipinos originally ranked no. 33 before the points accumulated from the past two international FIBA tournaments were added to all the participating teams.
Gilas only acquired minimal points during the FIBA Asia Cup after the national team failed to enter the tournament quarterfinals for the first time in 15 years.
The young Gilas squad formed only finished the tournament with a 1-2 record, winning only against India while tasting double-digit losses against New Zealand and Lebanon during the group phase.
Meanwhile, in their World Cup Asian qualifiers campaign, the national team currently holds a 3-3 record in the first four windows.
In all of the six games played, Gilas only managed to hack out wins against the lower-ranked Indian national team and Saudi Arabia.
However, against Lebanon and New Zealand, Gilas failed to exceed the expectations of the Philippine basketball community.
The Filipinos lost twice against New Zealand by a margin of double-digits while also bowing down to Lebanon despite the presence of NBA star Jordan Clarkson and Kai Sotto in their lineup.
With that being said, the Philippines is now behind these Asia-Pacific countries: Australia (3), Iran (21), New Zealand (24), China (27), Korea (34), and Jordan (35).
