CHICAGO - On a team where the hype and expectations were anchored heavily on 7-foot-3 Kai Sotto and 6-foot-10 Ange Kouame, it was a 5-foot-10 bundle of joy that saved Gilas from disaster.
Fittingly, the savior honors a saint in his long first name while an angel appears in his last name. This is what the religious refer to as divine intervention.
Samjosef Belangel.
Take a bow, sir. And thanks to your heroics, our basketball-crazed nation, which appeared headed toward an uneasy, restless Wednesday night, will wake up instead with a collective hangover of euphoria on Thursday.
Like an apparition that comes and goes quickly, the miracle shot that Samjosef pulled off to snuff South Korea, 81-78, lasted for 2.9 seconds of what seemed like basketball eternity.
And it was a sight to behold.
With the score tied at 78-78, Belangel darted from the baseline, caught the inbounds pass from Dwight Ramos, dribbled twice with his left hand and shook off 6-foot-6 Lee Seoung hun before swishing a one-legged 3-pointer.
Luck, maybe.
I call it poise and the persistence to make good things happen. Like height, they don't teach those traits in basketball academies. It's either you have it or you don't and Samjosef got plenty.
THIS KID, ONLY 21 YEARS YOUNG, GOT SO MUCH BALLS HE WILL NEED BIGGER SHORTS FOR THE NEXT GAME.
Belangel personified the heart that has become the tireless battle cry of our basketball program. He made up for his deficit in length with 150 pounds of moxie and tallied 13 points, five rebounds and two assists in 22 minutes and 12 seconds of action.
Samjosef was delightfully slow at times, but his hoops IQ made him a step ahead of his defenders. It was no coincidence that when he left the game at the 5:30 mark of the fourth quarter, the Koreans made a run.
Belangel's buzzer-beater was uplifting, but it didn't sanitize all the bad stuff.
Gilas made only 28 of 64 from the field (43.7 percent) and just 7-of-21 from 3 (33.3 percent).
Despite the twin towers advantage, they only had a 41-40 rebounding edge. The 10 turnovers were tolerable but the sometimes stagnant offense suggested a lack of cohesion.
Kai Sotto was okay with 11 points and seven boards on 4-for-9 shooting. He was dragging on defense, tentative at times. But given that he just crawled out of a 14-day quarantine period, this isn't the best game to assess him.
This was the first time I saw Dwight Ramos. I'd like to see him play everyday. Smart and tough, his personal 5-0 run kept Gilas to within 49-46 at a critical time in the contest where the Koreans were threatening to pull away.
Kouame was terrific beyond the arc, 3-for-5, but I'd like him to sprinkle his offense with some more dirty work down low, kind of like the nasty stuff Ra Guna did for the Koreans.
All told, this was a great win for Gilas and a tribute to SBP's unrelenting drive to make a headway against the Fiba powerhouses such as Korea and China.
But make no mistake, this team is a work in progress.
It cannot rely on miracles all the time.
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