Gilas Youth battles Chinese Taipei in a bid to come up with a strong finish in the FIBA U18 Asian Championship on Friday at the Azadi Basketball Hall in Tehran.
Action fires off at 2:45 p.m. (Manila time) with the Filipinos looking to come up with a bounce back win following a sorry 83-99 quarterfinal loss to Lebanon last Wednesday.
With the setback, the Filipinos were relegated to classification phase while the Lebanese advanced to the semifinals and booked a ticket to the FIBA U19 World Cup in Hungary next year.
But Batang Gilas are confident of beating the Taiwanese.
In fact, in their preliminaries meeting last Tuesday, the Filipinos crushed the Taiwanese, 84-73, with Mason Amos doing damage, firing 28 points, six rebounds and six assists.
The 6-foot-7 Amos, however, was shackled by the Lebanese as he was held to only 11 points in their quarterfinal encounter.
Aside from Amos, tipped to step up are Ateneo de Manila University prospect Kyle Gamber and Manuel Luis Pablo, who delivered 10 and nine points, respectively, against the Lebanese.
For Chinese Taipei, Chun Sheng Chang is expected to take charge once more as emerges fifth in the tournament’s scoring derby, averaging 17.8 markers in four games.
Chun Yen Kuo and Te Chi Hsu, who led Chinese Taipei with 17 and 13 markers, respectively, in their quarterfinal game against Japan are also tipped to step up.