You don’t usually hear someone saying that the Philippine men’s basketball team has the height to keep up with some teams outside Southeast Asia.

However, in a surprising result that rocked the basketball world, Gilas Pilipinas, known to be relatively undersized, stunned world number six Latvia in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament.

The deciding factor, according to head coach Tim Cone, was the height and heft they had against the hosts.

“It’s really our size and it was really the play of June Mar [Fajardo] and Kai [Sotto] that was the difference,” Cone said when asked how he assessed Gilas’ huge upset win during a press conference on Monday at the Cignal Customer Experience Center.

In what you can call an “unusual” sight, the 6-feet-10 Fajardo and seven-feet-three Sotto posed a threat against Latvia’s bigs, and with the European team’s three-point shooting not clicking, Gilas made Latvia miss Kristaps Porzingis a lot.

“Without Kai and June Mar there, it wouldn’t have mattered how well Justin [Brownlee] and Dwight [Ramos] played. The presence of the two big guys was really the difference-maker,” Cone further said.

In general, no Gilas players stand below six feet with Chris Newsome and CJ Perez the shortest at six-feet-two.

With six-foot-one combo guard Scottie Thompson ruled out at the 11th hour, Cone assigned Newsome and six-foot-four Dwight Ramos to play point guard at times, marking a rare time that a Philippine team is within the ideal global height range per position.

What impressed the seasoned coach, though, about Sotto is how he played power forward when they played together with Fajardo.

“You gotta give Kai a lot of credit because for Kai to play with June Mar, he had to stay in the perimeter and play almost like a wing,” Cone further said.

“That was a big adjustment for him, and he did it flawlessly.”

Following that impressive game as a duo, Cone was glad that both Sotto and Fajardo were cohesive enough to hold their ground against a top European team.