Congratulations! The Philippine National men’s basketball team “Gilas Pilipinas” will move one step closer to its Olympic dream after they defeats Japan with 81-70 final score during semifinals of the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship on Friday, held at the College of Social Work Dayun in Changsha, China.

Andray Blatche provided a 22 points and Dondon Hontiveros helped with 18 points over stiffer match-up against Japan. De Ocampo also had 7 rebounds and 2 steals to go with his eight points while Norwood do his best defensively, coming up with a couple of steals and block to go with 5 rebounds.

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According to Philippines coach Tab Baldwin, “I think Japan deserves an awful lot of credit”. “They could easily have won that game. It was an outstanding game of basketball. I thought our guys just made a few more plays in the last minute and a half and they didn’t”, he added.

The Philippines is now ensured of silver medal as well as the prime chance to win the gold medal and automatically qualify for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil.

According to the source, “The Philippines underlined their status as one of the powers of Asian basketball, making it to the Final for the second straight time. Unlike two years ago when they lost at home in the title game to Iran, Gilas will this time have to play against the unbeaten Chinese in front of their own fans”.

The schedule of Philippines vs. China is on Saturday, October 3 at 8:30pm after the match-up of Iran and Japan for 3rd place at 6:00pm.