Gilas Pilipinas barge into King Abdullah Cup semis after OT thriller over Tunisia

It took five more minutes for the Philippines to notch its second straight win and progress into the last four of the King Abdullah Cup, after coming up on top of a slugfest over Tunisia in a 74-73 thriller Thursday evening (Friday morning, Manila time) at the Prince Hamzah Sport Hall in Amman, Jordan.

Tab Baldwin’s Gilas were caught in a dogfight against the reigning AfroBasket champions, but summoned everything they have to force and eventually win in overtime to go 2-1 in the tournament, with the American mentor repeated against German coaching legend Dirk Baurmann for their first match-up in six years, with their previous encounter being the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship where the Filipinos walloped the then-defending champions Iran in Changsha, China.

Before tip-off, their place in the knockout semifinals were secured in the earlier game, in which Egypt remain unbeaten with an 88-78 drubbing of Saudi Arabia who ended their tournament with a wooden spoon after losing all of their four games.

Ange Kouame turned up to fill the stat line on his way to a game-high index rating of 24, in which he led Gilas with 12 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists and 5 blocks, none bigger than his rejection of Achref Gannouni to preserve the final count.

With Isaac Go being shackled no thanks to his three first-half fouls, Kouame took the cudgels as he played a team-high 36.2 minutes that produced those numbers.

The backcourt pair of Dwight Ramos and SJ Belangel helped the center by adding 12 and 11 markers respectively.

Gilas came with guns blazing in the first half, but their stellar 7/18 clip from beyond the arc were immaterial heading into the restart, in which the Tunisians eventually fought back and took the advantage away from the Asian side, largely in part by their spectacular free throw shooting in which they only missed just twice out of their 24 shots from the stripe all game long.

For the 34^th-ranked Carthage Eagles, Oussama Marnaoui led all scorers with 19 and Gannouni added 16, but their late game takeover was pushed back by a late charge by Gilas to force overtime, with Rey Suerte knotted the contest at 66 with a big top of the key triple off a Belangel feed.

Gilas then wrested control in the extra session, wherein key buckets for Carl Tamayo and Thirdy Ravena in a 35-second stretch gave them a four-point lead, 73-69 with 1:05 remaining.

However, Tunisia clawed back and even leveled the match for the 10^th and final time at 73-apiece when Ahmed Addami scored a tip-in after Gannouni missed the initial lay-up with 14 seconds to go.

But Gilas, buoyed by the Filipinos in attendance, got the final word as Thirdy split his charities and held their fort in the dying seconds to win a nail-biter, with Kouame following up his game-saving denial by disrupting the final Tunisian inbound pass at the horn.

The Scores:

PHILIPPINES 74 – Kouame 12, Ramos 11, Belangel 10, Go 8, Ravena 7, Matt Nieto 7, Baltazar 5, Tamayo 5, Suerte 5, Heading 3, Navarro 1, Ildefonso 0, Chiu 0

TUNISIA 73 – Marnaoui 19, Gannouni 16, El Ochi 10, Jawadi 9, Lahiani 6, Chihi 5, Bouallegue 4, Addami 2, Ben Yahia 2

Quarter scores: 15-14, 36-31, 49-53, 66-66 (reg), 74-73 (OT)

FILE PHOTO: JORDAN BASKETBALL FEDERATION