Fans can watch the Philippines vs. Singapore basketball game live online and see if Gilas Pilipinas can continue to roll through the competition at the 2017 SEABA Championships after a record-breaking opening game.
The Philippines basketball team will play its second game of the tournament on Saturday, with tipoff scheduled for 7 p.m. (11 a.m. GMT/7 a.m. ET). The game will be broadcast locally in the Philippines and will also be available live online (the streaming video can be found below).
Gilas Pilipinas has never struggled in the SEABA Championships before, generally blowing out the competition and winning most games by 40 points or more. But the opening game in the 2017 tournament was the biggest blowout yet, a 147-40 victory over Myanmar during which the Philippines team thoroughly dominated.
Gilas Pilipinas pulverizes Myanmar to open its #SEABA2017 campaign! #LabanPilipinas ?? pic.twitter.com/ACaGnhNfKG
— PBAonTV5 (@PBAonTV5) May 12, 2017
The game, played before the home crowd in Quezon City, was never close. Gilas Pilipinas raced out to a 17-0 advantage thanks to 11 points from Roger Pogoy in the first quarter. As Smart Gilas Basketball noted, the Philippines team continued to pull away, taking a 66-12 lead into halftime and topping 100 points with a minute left in the third quarter.
Let’s support Gilas Pilipinas in the 2017 SEABA Championship! Full schedule? pic.twitter.com/aaC6lLclsA
— PBAonTV5 (@PBAonTV5) May 12, 2017
Even a half-hearted run from Myanmar wasn’t enough to slow Gilas Pilipinas in the game.
“Myanmar showed signs of life in the third quarter, scoring 17 after only posting 12 points in the entire first half,” CNN Philippines noted. “But there was nothing they could do to stop Gilas from running away with the win.”
In the end, eight players finished in double figures for Gilas Pilipinas as the team emptied the bench early in the first half and spread playing time around.
Despite the lopsided game, Gilas Pilipinas is trying to stay focused and make their way through the tournament. Though the Philippines team is the heavy favorite to win the SEABA Championships this year, they are not looking past any opponents.
“As far as we are concerned, we want to be coming out there and playing the game the right way. We want to win games because we are the harder working team and the team that plays together. Those are the things for us,” said head coach Chot Reyes.
Reyes added that his team doesn’t expect to have the rest of the tournament go quite so easily.
“We don’t expect this kind of result at all,” Reyes said, via CNN Philippines . “We expect to encounter a lot stiffer, a lot tougher competition.”
But fans who watch the Philippines vs. Singapore basketball live online game are likely to see another lopsided matchup. The Singapore team looked flat in its opening game, losing by 21 points to an Indonesia team that isn’t terribly strong either.
A strong performance in the SEABA Championships can also help Gilas Pilipinas get past the heartache of last summer, when the team fell flat in the 2016 Rio Olympics qualifying tournament. The Philippines national team had a difficult task, staked in a group that included traditional powerhouse France, and their hopes of an upset were dashed with a winless tournament.
Now, the Philippines team is looking to take care of business in the SEABA Championships and move toward the 2018 FIFA Basketball World Cup. In the past few years, Gilas Pilipinas has steadily climbed the ranks and is now the No. 29 team in the FIBA World rankings, and the No. 3 team in Asia. For a country so in love with basketball, playing to the biggest stage is a major goal, and winning SEABA is just a step along the way.
Fans who want to watch the Philippines vs. Singapore basketball game live online can click here for streaming video from Sports 5.
[Featured Image by Stanley Chou/Getty Images]
