Manila, July 29 -- Gilas Pilipinas turned things around in the second half to beat reigning TAT champions Macau Black Bears, 103-98, in a special club-versus-country battle on Monday night at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City.

Down by as much as 21 points in the second quarter of the send-off match, Gilas came alive in the third, dropping 33 points to cut the lead down to two before dominating the early part of the fourth to go up, 93-85, with 5:38 left.

Macau still put up a scare midway through the fourth as it went on a 7-0 run to cut the lead down to one, 93-92, with 3:58 to go.

However, back-to-back jumpers from Chris Newsome and Justin Brownlee brought Gilas' lead back to seven, while AJ Edu put the exclamation point with ...