THE FIBA Asia Cup 2025 is seven months away, but for Gilas Pilipinas, the preparation for the tournament has now begun.
Gilas Pilipinas entered the Inspire Sports Academy in Calamba, Laguna with sights set two-fold - win their two remaining games of the qualifiers against Chinese Taipei and New Zealand on February 20 and 23 respectively, and build up already for the actual FIBA Asia Cup 2025 tournament in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The Inspire camp will be brief as Gilas Pilipinas is slated to leave for the Middle East on Thursday for the 2nd Doha International Camp.
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That begins a whirlwind trip for the Philippine team where they will play an away game in Taipei before going down under to Auckland.
National head coach Tim Cone said their Doha friendlies is by design as they are already building up for the FIBA Asia Cup where they will be battling against the best teams in the continent.
Gilas will be going up against Qatar on Friday, Lebanon on Saturday, and Egypt on Sunday, simulating the Asia Cup where games are played nearly in consecutive days.
“We wanted this to be a hard trip and it’s going to be a hard trip because we’re gonna be traveling, we’re playing games three consecutive days. We feel like that’s the preparation that we’re going to have,” said Cone.
Cone said Gilas won’t have that opportunity shortly before the August 5-17 joust as, from his understanding, they will only have less than a week to prepare for the Asia Cup.
“Honestly, I don’t know how long our prep we’ll have for the FIBA Asia in August. What I understand is it’s five days. And (there’s) not gonna be much time to prep for that,” said Cone.
“That’s why we decided to go to Doha so we could prep. This whole trip, including Taiwan, New Zealand, because we qualified, is all prep for FIBA Asia. Playing three games in a row is what we are going to do in FIBA Asia. We’ll play three days in a row, most likely. So these are the things that we have to do,” said Cone.
Cone said the Doha trip would also allow them to acclimatize not just with the Middle Eastern teams but also the climate of the area, which is relatively near Jeddah.
“We will be playing in the Middle East in that kind of weather. These are things that are going to help us prepare. Chot’s group, of course, they played a lot of Middle Eastern teams. We played Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria. But this team, we haven’t played a Middle Eastern team yet. They haven’t got a feel for their style,” said Cone.
“Last year, we didn’t play a Middle Eastern team. We played European, we played South American, we played in Asia, but we haven’t played Middle Eastern. This will again be part of our preparation. We won’t have that chance to do that before we play in FIBA. I’m sure we are going to be playing some Middle Eastern teams during the FIBA Asia Championships."
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