WUHAN, China — The second round of the FIBA-Asia Championship starts Monday with Smart Gilas Pilipinas hoping to reaffirm its mastery over Jordan as it presses its comeback bid to the Olympic stage.

Though Gilas lost to Jordan in the Jones Cup last July, the boys of Serbian coach Rajko Toroman still enjoy a 6-3 advantage over the Jordanians in their personal duel the past two years, including a friendly duel a week before the start of the event.

More than that, Toroman knows Jordan’s game plan like the palm of his hand.

“We have a lot of games with Jordan, last two years,” said Toroman as the national team plays Jordan at 3:30 p.m. “Mostly, we won the games. They beat us in the Jones Cup, but last game we won in Manila.”

The Nationals won their opening game here against the United Arab Emirates, 92-52, but lost to host China (60-75). Smart-Gilas closed out its preliminary round campaign with a 113-71 victory over lowly Bahrain last Saturday.

With a 2-1 card, the national team moved to the second stage of the Asian championship, the qualifier for the London Olympics next year, together with fellow Group D China (3-0) and UAE (1-2), and the top three teams from Group C, Japan (3-0), Jordan (2-1) and Syria (1-2).

The six teams are in Group F.

In Group E are the top three teams from Group A, South Korea (3-0), Lebanon (2-1) and Malaysia (1-2), and Group B, back-to-back FIBA-Asia champion Iran (3-0), Chinese Taipei (2-1) and Uzbekistan (1-2).

The records of the teams will be carried over in the second round of FIBA-Asia, although their won games against opponents that were eliminated after the preliminaries will no longer count and that teams will play countries from the previous groupings.

The Philippines is also scheduled to battle Japan on Tuesday and Syria on Wednesday.

The top four teams from Groups E and F will advance to the crossover knockout quarterfinals, which is set Friday.

Focus now is against Jordan, which beat Syria (71-58) and Indonesia (89-59), but lost to Japan (87-92).

Games Monday (Wuhan Gymnasium, Wuhan, China)
9 a.m. — Malaysia vs Iran
11 a.m. — Lebanon vs Chinese Taipei
1:30 p.m. — South Korea vs Uzbekistan
3:30 p.m. — Jordan vs Smart-Gilas
6 p.m. — Japan vs UAE
8 p.m. — Syria vs China

source: Waylon Galvez -MB