CALL him Mr. Stabilizer despite being diminutive at 5-foot-10 and young at 21.
On Wednesday night, Sam Josef “SJ” Belangel played like a giant, displayed the basketball IQ of a veteran and add to his CV—a pair of hot shooting hands that delivered the killer blow against a team that denied the Philippines of a win for a long eight years.
Belangel, Gilas Pilipinas’s wily point guard, received the inbounds pass with 2.7 seconds remaining and the score tied at 78-all.
The Ateneo standout had no recourse but to shake off his South Korean guard, Seounghyun Lee, who was practically all over him near the sideline. But Belangel wouldn’t be denied—with a 6-foot-6 Lee blocking his line of sight to the basket, the Ateneo Blue Eagle improvised with an off-balanced three-pointer.
Swoooshhh! The Filipinos edged the Koreans, 81-78, sending the country to the Fiba Asia Cup in Jakarta in August and ending an eight-year curse that hounded the country since that historic 2013 victory over the Koreans at the MOA Arena.
“I felt I had the confidence to make that shot,” Belangel told BusinessMirror on Thursday. “You need that confidence inside the last three seconds. It’s all about heart and I’m happy we did it.”
That wasn’t even the play head coach Tab Baldwin designed after calling back-to-back timeouts in the game’s most crucial moment.
Dwight Ramos, Gilas’s top scorer with 16 points, was tasked to take the final shot—a quick two-pointer.
Ramos was the designated inbounder and was supposed to pass to either Ange Kouame or Carl Tamayo and get the ball back for a quick conversion. That didn’t happen and as they say, the rest is history.
Belangel finished with 13 points, five rebounds and two assists for Gilas which has gone undefeated in four games.
“He [Belangel] stabilized us a lot and made the big plays, especially the last shot,” Baldwin said. “We are very fortunate and I am happy for the players.”
On Friday, Belangel and his fellow Gilas cadets will face Indonesia, which reeled to its third loss in four Group A games at the hands of South Korea, 104-81, on Thursday afternoon. The Koreans improved to 3-1 won-lost and are now also going to Jakarta.
For Belangel, the Indonesians are no easy foes.
“It’s not going to be easy facing Indonesia. We have to treat this as a championship game for us, we have to win every possession, step by step, and we must not be complacent,” said Belangel, an Interdisciplinary Studies junior who has three more years of eligibility for the Blue Eagles in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines.
The Philippines-Indonesia match is set at 6 p.m. again at the Angeles University Foundation Gym. Japan and Chinese Taipei square off at 2:30 p.m. in a Group B match in the third and final window of the qualifiers.
The Filipinos will challenging an Indonesian side that has former Gilas head coach Rajko Toroman as tactician and ex-Philippine Basketball Association import Lester Prosper as the team’s naturalized player.
And Belangel stressed that close victory on Wednesday reared cracks on the team that need mending.
“There’s a lot of things to improve. Yes, we celebrated the victory over Korea, but it’s now back to work for all of us,” Belangel said.
Image courtesy of fiba.basketball
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