With both teams not having a benefit of practice, both North All-Stars coach Louie Alas and South All-Stars mentor Carlos Garcia will just allow their player to play their game during the centerpiece event of the PBA All-Stars tonight at Calasiao, Pangasinan.
Alas and Garcia, both first timers in the annual festivity, said that the lack of time for practices makes it difficult to map out specific strategies for the game at the Calasiao Sports Complex.
“We just have to see how the game progresses. Kasi, wala ka namang magagawa kundi iyon dahil kulang sa practice,” said Alas, mentor of the league-leading Phoenix Fuel Masters.
“You cannot force them to practice dahil kulang-kulang nga,” added Garcia, who was picked to mentor South after leading Rain or Shine Elasto Painters to a second place standings in the ongoing PBA Philippine Cup.
Only a handful of players from both teams are present as of Friday in North’s Stanley Pringle and Marcio Lassiter and South’s James Yap, June Mar Fajardo, Roger Pogoy, Baser Amer, PJ Simon, Jio Jalalon, and Mac Belo.
North All Stars reinforcements Benjie Paras and Ronnie Magsanoc, as well as the South All Stars’ Alvin Patrimonio and Jerry Codinera are only set to start arriving Saturday at the earliest.
An hour-long practice session Sunday morning has been scheduled for each team but both Garcia and Alas doubts if that will be enough to instill their system on the players.
“Kaya nga ni hindi namin alam kung magpa-practice pa,” said Garcia. “Baka talk-through na lang.”
“Kasi kapag enjoy mga players, kita ng mga fans,” Alas uttered. “So mostly we would just let them play their game”
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Gilas Pilipinas head coach Joseller “Yeng” Guiao said that they were obviously the “overwhelming underdogs” in their group in 2019 FIBA World Cup this August in China.
The national men’s basketball team mentor said in a television interview that it will a daunting task to pull off a victory over group mates No. 4 Serbia, No. 13 Italy and No. 39 Angola.
“Looking at Italy, Serbia and Angola, those are certainly tough teams,” Guiao said in an interview with ESPN5. “We are not going to get an easy game. We’re certainly going to be the overwhelming underdogs against any of those teams.”
“We’re the weakest in our group but we’re coming with the mindset that we can win at least one, maybe two games. Probably that will enable us to go to the next round,” he added.
The NLEX Road Warriors head coach said that, if there is a team that Gilas could beat, it might be Angola, which is eight spots lower that the Philippines in the FIBA World rankings.
“If there’s a team that we can hope to maybe upset, it will be Angola. Serbia is really a powerhouse, a world class team certainly. Same with Italy,” said Guiao, who added that it will be hard for Gilas to expect close games unlike in 2014 FIBA World Cup.
Philippines needed at least two victories to advance to the next round, which have an extra incentive as the top-ranked Asian team will automatically earned a ticket in 2020 Tokyo Olympics./PN
