Jones Cup dispatch: Looking for revenge vs South Korea

For the duration of the 2011 Jones Cup in Taipei, SMART-Gilas Pilipinas national team assistant coach Charles Tiu, brother of Chris, will be filing exclusive dispatches for InterAKTV.

As a kid, my most vivid memories of international basketball were: 1) Asi Taulava posting up Yao Ming in the 2002 Asian Games; and 2) the Philippines’ heartbreaking loss to South Korea, also in those Asian  Games, where Olsen Racela missed two free throws, allowing Lee Sang Min to steal the win with a buzzer-beating three-pointer.

Against SMART-Gilas in the 2010 Asian Games, South Korea again crushed our hopes in the quarterfinals of the basketball tournament. I don’t know when the last time we beat them was, but we definitely are going to do our best to beat them today. They are a good physical team with great shooters.

In a way, they play much like Chinese Taipei, except they are bigger. They’ve got legitimate big men and a naturalized American player.

It will be a tall order, because JVee Casio remains a game time decision today because of a lot of swelling in his knee. He played through pain in the first three games, and we won’t know until the warm-ups if he can play.

The good news is that Asi can play today, even though he got thrown out against Malaysia.

Catch the game live at 5 p.m. on AKTV on IBC-13! And pray for us!

For more updates on SMART-Gilas, follow Charles Tiu on Twitter.

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