The final roster of the Gilas Pilipinas is composed of mainstays. They will be competing for the 2017 FIBA Asia Cup in Lebanon from 8 to 20 August 2017.
Calvin Abueva, Terrence Romeo, and Jayson Castro lead the list of mainstays, which also include Jio Jalalon, Roger Pogoy, Matthew Wright, Gabe Norwood, Japeth Aguilar, Raymond Almazan, Carl Bryan Cruz and June Mar Fajardo. Most of them were part of the team that won gold in the 2017 SEABA Championship held from 12 to 18 May 2017 in the Philippines.
The newcomer to complete the 12-man pool is Christian Standhardinger. Standhardinger and Cruz are taking the places of naturalized player Andray Blatche and sniper Allein Maliksi as announced by head coach Chot Reyes on Tuesday, July 25.
Blatche joined Gilas Pilipinas in the SEABA championship in Manila a few months back.
Spin.ph said in a report that Maliksi, who gave a good account of himself in his maiden Gilas stint in the Seaba championship, had to be dropped because of the one-per-team policy of the PBA in terms of lending players to the Fiba Asia Cup-bound team.
The 2017 FIBA Asia Cup will be the 29th continental basketball championship in Asia. The tournament is organised by FIBA Asia. It will be hosted at the Nouhad Nawfal Stadium.
Reports said the tournament will determine the composition of the joint FIBA Asia and FIBA Oceania qualifiers for the 2019 FIBA World Cup. The top five teams in the 2016 FIBA Asia Challenge will earn an extra berth in the 2017 FIBA Asia Cup for their respective sub-zones. Australia and New Zealand will also participate in this tournament.
All 16 teams who qualify for the tournament also qualify for the first round of the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup qualification for FIBA Asia and FIBA Oceania.
comments