Gilas Pilipinas head coach Patrick Aquino beams with pride following the promotion of Gilas Pilipinas U16 squad to the Division A of the FIBA U16 Women’s Asian Championships.
Aquino told Daily Tribune that their performance has been the best they had as they went undefeated in five games capped by an 83-60 win over Iran in the finals to win the Division B title on Monday morning (Manila time) at the Prince Hamzah Stadium in Amman, Jordan.
He said their performance is a vast improvement from what they had last year in which they finished third behind champion Samoa and runner-up Syria.
“I feel so proud and very excited with these girls. They’re so much fun to watch and I’m very proud,” said Aquino, who passed the coaching cudgels to assistant coach Aileen Lebornio to focus on the FIBA Women’s Asian Championship in Sydney recently.
“From the recent tournament format, this is the best we have shown so far, having to win five straight games and being promoted to Division A. It’s a great honor for us just to play and be the No. 1 team in Division B. I have nothing to say.”
The Filipinas were ruthless as they clobbered their foes by large margins.
They opened their campaign with a 79-40 crushing of Hong Kong before dominating lowly Maldives, 144-22, and Jordan, 106-58, to book a spot in the semifinals with a 3-0 win-loss record in Group A.
Then, they crushed Malaysia, 79-44, in the semis to arrange a title duel with Iran.
All in all, the Philippines registered an average winning mark of 53.4 points with Ava Fajardo, the younger sister of Gilas mainstay Ella Fajardo, serving as the scoring leader with 16.2 points per game while Nevaeh Smith contributes with an average of 13.2 points.
Aquino said their partnership with Fil-Am Nation Select allowed them to get competitive exposure while recruiting the best talents from all over the United States.
But more than that, the presence of Lebornio, the head coach of the University of the East women’s squad, was such a huge help to their title run and promotion to Division A.
“Actually, Fil-Am Nation conducted a training camp in Los Angeles for two to three weeks before training again in Manila for three more weeks to integrate them with the local players,” Aquino said.
“It will be tougher. The longer we train, our performance will be better. Coach Ai really led the team. It was good for her to experience an international level as my assistant coach for the coming years.”
