DWIGHT Ramos may consider Gilas Pilipinas’ victory vs. world No. 6 Latvia in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament as his biggest feat yet, but he’d rather view it as more of a challenge for the national team to keep elevating its level of play.

“The win is like, the best win in my career, that’s what it felt like,” the 6-foot-4 guard told media on Friday during a fan event arranged by Lawson Philippines at One Ayala in Makati.

“A lot of people thought we won’t get into the semis, but after we lost the game against Brazil (in the semis), it felt like we should have won the whole tournament. So it still felt like a disappointment for us.”

Although Gilas changed 64 years of history by finally defeating a European team again, Ramos feels they could’ve done better and gone farther.

“[Brazil] deserves it, but I think, if not them, it could’ve been us,” he said.

He also acknowledged that it was, indeed, quite a drastic adjustment for the nationals -and for him, more pointedly – not to have Ginebra star Scottie Thompson manning the backcourt in Tim Cone’s triangle offense.

“It’s hard if you (have to) do a lot of things on the court, but if we had Scottie, he would’ve helped. If Scottie was there, I could’ve done more,” he explained.

No way but up

But Ramos, of course, isn’t crying over spilt milk. In fact, he believes their OQT performance should set the standard for the Gilas program moving forward.

“[Gilas’ future is] super bright. We still have a bunch of years until the next World Cup. We really only practiced for four days before we left and we still made it to the semis,” he said.

PHOTO BY: JEROME ASCANO

“We thought we were gonna make it to the Olympics, but we lost in the semis. Pretty disappointing, but we’ll do it again next year, the next World Cup, and we’re gonna make the next one.”

Ramos also signed a contract renewal with Levanga Hokkaido for his third B.League season, and he’s stoked to bring over his FIBA OQT experience to Japan.

He continued: “I just feel like I keep getting better, especially when you play well in the World Cup, and the OQT just gives you more confidence like I could show up in big games, so when I play in the B. League, I’ll be ready for sure.”