MANILA, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines men's national basketball team failed to defend its home as the visiting Kazakhstan eked out a 92-88 win in the ninth round of the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup Asian qualifiers here on Friday.
The Philippines' Stanley Pringle, who served as a naturalized player, churned out 29 points and four assists. Alexandr Zhigulin and Anton Bykov led the charge for Kazakhstan, finishing with a game-high 30 and 20 points, respectively.
The two teams engaged in a fierce shootout from the very beginning of the game but the Filipinos missed crucial shots at the finish, especially in the last two minutes, allowing the Kazakhs to pull off the victory.
"We are disappointed but we still have one game on Monday. We cannot feel too negative about ourselves. I think we can salvage the situation if we can play a good game against Iran and learn the lessons from this game," said Yeng Guiao, the head coach of the Philippines.
"The story of the night is our defense. We scored enough to win but we could not get the stops," Pringle said. After the duel, the Philippines is currently tied with Japan in third place in Group F with five wins and four loses.
According to the rules, the best fourth-place team in the two remaining groups, E and F, in the Asian qualifiers will join the top three teams in each group in the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup in China.
That means in order to boost its chances for a place in the 2019 World Cup, the Philippines needs to pull off a win when it hosts Iran at the same venue on December 3.
