TEAM Pilipinas emerged victorious over Jordan, 82-73, in a hot-tempered tune-up game that had to be halted following a shouting match between rival coaches at the Meralco gym on Wednesday night.
Yeng Guiao furiously confronted Jordan counterpart Joey Stiebing at midcourt after a Jordan player threw the ball at Scottie Thompson at the final 6:26 mark - the last of a number of chippy confrontations between players from both sides.
Long before that, the tuneup game, the second between the two sides in three days, had seen tempers flare over the physical play of the Jordanians.
"Sinabihan niya ako, 'I'm going to take your ass.' Kaya sabi ko, 'C'mon take my ass,'" said Guiao when asked about his shouting match with Stiebing.
"I was challenging him to take my ass pero hindi naman niya ginawa," he continued.“I just don’t want us to be bullied in our own country. They were bullying us all the way.”
In the first half, Guiao already confronted Mohammed Hussein at midcourt after the bruising Jordan big man committed a hard foul on Christian Standhardinger in the second quarter.
"Again I felt that was unnecessary. It was a takedown, tapos dinaganan niya pa si Stan," said Guiao of the incident.
The national coach later had his first confrontation with his Jordan counterpart.
Cooler heads though, were quick to prevent the situation from escalating into a full-blown melee, four months following the infamous brawl between Australia and the Philippines at the Philippine Arena.
Standhardinger and Hussein had both been going at each other hard as early as the first tune-up game between the two teams last Monday. At one point, the two were even whistled for a technical foul each.