Philippines stays at No. 30 in FIBA ranking

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines stayed in the Top 30 in FIBA World Ranking through the first round of the World Cup qualifiers.

Behind the strong showing of its Gilas Pilipinas in the initial round of 2019WC eliminator, the Philippines kept its spot at No. 30 in the global ranking and No. 4 behind Australia, Iran and China in the Asia/Pacific region.

Australia stayed at No. 10 while Iran and China both dropped a notch down to No. 25 and No. 29, respectively.

With the leading teams all playing up to their potentials in their respective regions, the Top 16 stayed the same from the last time FIBA released the world ranking.

The United States remains No. 1 in the pecking order, followed by Spain, France, Serbia, Argentina, Lithuania, Slovenia, Croatia, Greece, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Italy, Puerto Rico and Latvia.

Turkey and Dominican Republic swapped places with the former improving to No. 16 and the latter dropping to 18.

Gilas Pilipinas is among the top performers in Asia in the first round of the WC qualifiers, sweeping their series versus Japan and Chinese Taipei, but dropping both its “away” and “home” games versus Australia.

Even with FIBA’s decision on the Philippine-Australia brawl pending, the international cage federation has released the second-round schedule where Gilas is slated to next play Iran on Sept. 13, Qatar on Sept. 17, Kazakhstan on Nov. 30, Iran on Dec. 3, Qatar on Feb. 21 and Kazakhstan on Feb. 24.

Gilas is now in Group F, carrying over a 4-2 mark as against Australia’s 5-1, Iran’s 5-1, Kazakhstan’s 3-3, Japan’s 2-2 and Qatar’s 2-2. The top three in this bracket automatically make the China WC2019.

Jordan, Lebanon and New Zealand pace Group E at 5-1, followed by Korea (4-2), China (3-3) and Syria (2-4).