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Big man tandem gives Pilipinas U21 a boost against Macau U21.



Pilipinas opened their tournament with a resounding 129 - 93 win over Macau.
Pepe Macalinag showed up at the right place at the right time pouring in an efficient 20 points together with Benedict Lagare's 27 markers.

Both big men took advantage of great ball movement around the defense as they often found themselves open for layups and dunks. Lagare lead all scorers as he poured 11 points in the first quarter and doing additional damage in the 3rd before he sat out the rest of the game.

Victor Gotardo facilitated the offense early dishing 8 of his 14 assists right after tip off as the Filipinos finished the 1st quarter ahead, 33 - 17. Meanwhile, Miguel Guardia came off the bench to record a double-double, 12 points 12 rebounds, and the only one with double digit rebounds as Pilipinas struggled to control the boards against Macau's big men.

Despite the huge win, newly elected Pilipinas coach NdR619 wasn't happy about everything.

"Well, we came, we played, we won. Nice threes, nice assists, nice everything but... F*CK, REBOUND GUYS!... rebounding output really bothers me, we need to improve... Gotardo was amazing in the first half, 12 assist at halftime, 8 1st quarter."

Macau was lead by J. Changjia who had 22 points and 16 boards, and Cen Qingyi emphasized their dominance in rebounding with 21 points and 13 rebounds including 7 in the offensive end. Hua Ruxuan scored 11 points and also had a feasting on the boards tonight with 4 offensive rebounds and 9 total for the game.

Pilipinas U21 will now be looking forward to their game against Kazakhstan U21 next week and the coach will be hoping to make adjustments to avoid another problematic showing on the boards.

The Scores:

PILIPINAS U21 - 129
Lagare 27, Macalinag 20, Montemayor 16, Salinas 16, Ocampo 12, Guardia 12, Rios 11, Valerio 8, Gayoles 4, Gotardo 3, Rojo 0, Carbon 0

MACAU U21 - 93
Changjia 22, Qingyi 21, Ruxuan 11, Baokang 11, Can 8, Runliang 8, Guangkai 6, Pingkang 4, Chongying 2, Beigou 1


Last edited by Pro_Shot 🇵🇭 at 4/23/2018 11:57:36 PM

And now my point on this.
It was my first match here and even if Macau could seem a low level opponent in my mind they were not. Their big men are at our level.. Their inside attack was some kind of good compared to other teams in the competition. Their lack was on D and they paid for it.
Speaking together with my staff we identified some key factor on this game: lagare matchup, our bench and fouls in fast paced match.
Basically about lagare and the bench we were right.. Since Benedict did his damage and the bench outscored macau's one 56-23.
Both their big men have high fouling rating but today they turned their soul on heaven without committing fouls.
Their low Out Def helped us our flow, we almost every time picked the right spot, our shot selection and percentage was great.
What was definetly not great is our rebounding. Our bench reduces the gap since macau's bench was simply not as good as ours but our starters suffered a lot. We allowed too many second chances and that's something we need to work on.
The other thing a bit disappointing is the low scoring outcome and percentage on the pg position: gayoles and gotardo did amazing things while passing and ugly ones while shooting.
Next one will be against Kazakhstan.
Keep on training your Filipino boys and preserve their minutes and game shape!

Let's rock. GO GILAS!

Hahahaha

Coach NdR's response to Ubiond (ITA U21 Scout) made my day! :D

Another great win for us, we did our damage using all the backcourt we had and basically we almost did the same difference points than China.
So I'm really happy on how this match was going so far.
A fast paced match causes a bit of trouble in defense, allowing too many points to Kazakhstan, but our offense was cool, well runned by our point guards. Having a good flow is important against a FCP, so props to Gotardo and Gayoles for running the team and to Salinas Ocampo Gotardo again Lagare and Montemayor to seal the deal and get the blowout win.
Next week we will rest, keep on training and controlling at your best the shape of your players! Thanks a lot this week I had a full shaped team in my hands, doing so we can achieve good things in the future!

coming up next the press conference by Pro_Shot with the MVP!

On a separate press conference, Brin Ocampo, who seemed not happy the way he gets his minutes said:

"You know if I don't get the minutes that I want, then I will boycott this team and be a Kevin Durant then! If I get enough minutes, then you'll see what type of damage can I do for this team. My momentum got destroyed by the minutes I get. Shoutout to the coach who don't trust me and don't give me enough minutes!"

Brin Ocampo had 21 points in 23 minutes, in which he believe is not enough for him to do damage.

Using Let the coach decide allows the game engine/coach to better rotate the players, in order to put the best player for that moment of the game. If you recall our chat on Facebook, I told you guys that we would have clinched a 60 gap during the second half and I told you that Brin would have played a little more in the second half.
So I'm sorry if Brin is feeling underrated, but the overall performance of the team is what really matters and if you take a look, we had three players rotating in SG (Ocampo starter, Gotardo and Salinas subs), we did always damage at every step of the match and the coach used a lot better the rotation than without LCD.
Just to say, with Strictly follow my depth chart, Gotardo would have played rather a half of his minutes and as you can see he's been our greatest player on court. His +/- was the best by far together with Montemayor, having him and Gayoles together allowed us to improve our flow which was great against a FCP. One of the reasons behind the LCD was exactly this one, I wanted to test if according to the game engine, Gayoles and Gotardo could have played together and the outcome was great.
Obviously the opponent was weak, so we will need a more challenging match to verify how strong we can be.
If we want to compete with China or Taiwan or even Hong Kong (this season they seem to be BRUTAL on D!) we need not to have a single scorer but more offensive options, otherwise we will still and always lose. What I want to achieve is a good balance between each role and between starters and rotations, we need to have always someone scoring, someone defending, someone allowing the flow to run smoothly.
It's not easy, because it requires training and patience, it requires to have the right players in the right shape next to each other, but that's the key for me to make the steps in which we're still behind compared to the top teams.

Hope it helps to make you understand Just for stats, Salinas did 21 points too in fewer minutes, had also a better plus minus than Brin. Not to blame on him I mean, it's because they played different parts of the match, but that's the porpouse of the Let the coach decide + blank spot.

But next time dont use that strategy look what happened to Lagare last night. Fouled out in the 1st half because of that LCD + stupid blank line-up. If you continue to do that strategy, might as well don't include Brin in it :)