Team Philippines through to Fiba-Asia Cup semis

Out of synch early, Team Philippines yesterday afternoon played well enough to survive.
Shooting poorly at the start and in the endgame, the Filipinos still hacked out a 75-68 decision of Chinese-Taipei to march into the Final Four of the fourth Fiba-Asia Cup at the Ota Gymnasium here.
Marcus Douthit, the 6-foot-10 naturalized Filipino center, carried the fight for the Filipinos in the first half just when everyone else in the team was throwing bricks.
And it took a stretch of brilliance in opening up the fourth quarter for the Philippines to dust off the Taiwanese, whom they buried in a 14-point hole heading into the final four minutes.
Next up for the Filipinos is defending champion Iran, which virtually went through the motions in an earlier contest before posting a 79-37 whipping of Uzbekistan.
Coach Chot Reyes is not at all happy with the way his charges pounded out the victory, which has equaled the Philippines’ best-ever finish in the tournament held once every two years in honor of Fiba founder Borislav Stankovic.
LA Tenorio, who also hurt the Taiwanese the most in the Philippines’ championship run in the Jones Cup in Taipei, hit five straight points to open up the fourth quarter before Douthit added a short stab that had the Filipinos racing to a 61-53 lead.
And that was all the momentum that the Philippines needed, as it bloated that advantage to 71-54 after triples by Gary David and Jeff Chan.
That 14-point bubble was enough to cushion a hard Taiwanese charge as they came to within 66-71 with under two minutes left before Tenorio hit two charities off a foul from Chen Shieh-cheh.
“We got rusty. We lost our edge because we came off two easy games (versus Macau and Uzbekistan) followed by a two-day break,” Reyes said.
“We played our worst game and we just found a way to win in the end.”
“We played bad. It was a bad game where we had bad shooting, bad decision-making and bad defense. We would’ve been returning to our hotel crying if it were Iran,” said assistant coach Jong Uichico.
Qatar upset Lebanon and will clash with the winner of the Japan vs China match in the other Final Four pairing.
Douthit went on to score 19 points that went with 18 rebounds with David, the scoring champion in the last PBA season, shooting 14.
Ranidel de Ocampo was the third man in twin digits for Reyes with 10.
Taipei made it a close game because of the heroics of seldom-used Douglas Creighton.
Creighton, who finished with 21 points, drilled in seven triples, the last coming in the dying seconds of the third period, which gave the Taiwanese a 53-52 lead.
But that proved to be Taipei’s last hurrah as Tenorio, the Jones Cup MVP, escaped tight guarding to score those five straight points.