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HANGZHOU – Faced with nightmarish defeat after Iran razed a 21-point Gilas Pilipinas lead with a barrage of three-pointers, June Mar Fajardo and Justin Brownlee came to the rescue with clutch hits in the gut-wrenching closing moments on Tuesday, October 3, as the Nationals hung on by a thread 84-83 to advance to the men’s basketball semifinals of the 19th Asian Games at the Zhejiang University Gymnasium.
Like the Persian desert sun, Iran, behind Matin Aghajanpour (three triples in the 4th quarter), Mohammandsina Vehedi (4 of 8 3s overall) and Navid Razaeifar (2 of 6 3s), melted a double-digit third quarter Gilas spread and twice seized the lead, first at 81-80 and then at 83-82.
But on both occasions, Gilas rose to the challenge and reclaimed the upper hand — on a putback by Fajardo 82-81, and a tough baseline jumper by Brownlee for 84-83, with 41 seconds remaining.
Then everything came down to an open three-point shot by Aghajanpour before the Gilas bench with 17 seconds to go. He missed.
Gilas called time and came out with what looked like a four-corner offense until the clock ran out.
Cone was a foot or two away from the Iranian shooter when he launched the three that would have broken the hearts of Gilas fans back home.
“I was almost right behind him so I could see the trajectory, it was going left,” Cone said. “When he released it, I knew it was a miss. It was just a matter of ‘can we get the rebound?’ We did, and they chased us around but couldn’t get a foul off us.”
Losing the 21-point lead was not exactly a shocker, said Cone.
“In the international game, things can turn on a dime, and this did in the fourth quarter,” he said. “Luckily we had a big lead. We should have never put ourselves in that position, but that’s the way these kinds of games are.”
Brownlee led Gilas with 36 points but was held to the game-winning basket in the fourth quarter by a box-and-one defense thrown by the Iranians that stifled his movement through most of the second half.
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