WITH Gilas Pilipinas trailing Georgia, 94-96, and only a split second left in the clock, Chris Newsome stood at the line in a bit of a quandary after making his first free throw.
Gilas, you see, had no intention of winning by that time and, in fact, with Georgia leading by three points, didn't even attempt a three-point shot and instead tried to dribble away the remaining time until Newsome was fouled.
The reason?
Under the quotient system that takes effect once Gilas, Latvia and Georgia ended up tied in Group A at 1-1 (win-loss), the Philippines needed only to avoid losing to Georgia by 19 points or more to advance to the semifinals.
READ Gilas marches on to OQT semifinals after two-point loss to Georgia
At that point, Georgia was well off its target margin of victory and the only remaining hope was for the game to go to overtime, where Goga Bitadze and his team would get five more minutes to reach its goal.
Gilas coach Tim Cone was well aware of the situation.
“We couldn’t go into overtime. We had an opportunity to shoot a three at the end to try and get us into overtime and play. But we just felt we didn’t want them to give an opportunity to try to extend the lead in overtime,” said Cone.
In the play that followed, Bitadze appeared like he was trying to put back Newsome's missed second free throw, only to see the ball bounce off the rim. The game ended with stunned look in the faces of the Georgia players and coaches.
Cone, in hindsight, felt he made a coaching blunder when he allowed Newsome to even take a second free throw, when the safest strategy at that point was for the Gilas guard to hold on to the ball and incur a violation.
Under FIBA rules, a basket does not count if a player deliberately scores a goal in his/her team’s basket, but it will count if it is made 'accidentally.'
Was Bitadze trying to make it look accidental?
Whatever, Cone said he shouldn't have allowed the situation to get to that point.
“He (Bitadze) missed a dunk, follow-up, that was a bad coaching decision on my part. I should have had Newsome hold the ball and not even shoot the second free throw and get a violation. That would have been the smart move," he said.
"But I blanked out," Cone admitted. "I didn’t think about it. We were lucky we didn’t go into overtime."
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