HEAD Coach Chot Reyes will field a team that is tailor-fit against Japan in the Fiba World Cup Asian Qualifiers on Friday.
Naturalized player Andray Blatche leads the 12-man squad along with fellow big man June Mar Fajardo, Asia’s best point guard Jayson Castro, Gabe Norwood and Japeth Aguilar.
Also on the team are Matthew Wright, Roger Pogoy, Calvin Abueva, Troy Rosario, Allein Maliksi, Kevin Alas and Kiefer Ravena.
Gilas Pilipinas takes on the Japanese at 6 p.m. at the Komazawa Olympic Park General Sports Gymnasium in Tokyo.
Raymond Almazan, Mac Belo and Carl Bryan Cruz were excluded from the roster, but Reyes said the three could make the team that will tackle Chinese Taipei on Monday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
“This is just the 12-man roster against Japan. It could be changed against Taiwan,” Reyes said on the Kwentong Gilas Facebook page.
“We took into account the team that we are playing tomorrow, so we have decided to sit Carl, Mac and Raymond. They took it professionally,” Reyes said. “They are still part of the team.”
Julio Lamas, the famed Argentine head coach who now handles Japan, had played Gilas in the 2014 Fiba World Cup in Spain, beating the Filipinos by only four points, 85-81.
Lamas was a seven-time Argentine League Coach of the Year who called the shots for superstars like Manu Ginobili and Luis Scola.
He is expected to rely on guards Yugi Togashi, Daiki Tanaka and Takoshi Furukawa to man the backcourt against Castro, Ravena and Alas.
Gilas and Japan did not face each other in the 2017 Fiba Asia Cup in Lebanon, but the Filipinos handed the Japanese two defeats in the 2015 Fiba Asia Championships in Changsha, China—73-66 in the second round and 81-70 in the semifinals.
In the past decade, Japan, No. 50 in the Fiba rankings, had its most impressive performance of fourth place in the Asian tournament two years ago.
The No. 30 Gilas, on the other hand, had five Fiba World Cup appearances, with its bronze-medal finish in 1954 still the best performance by any Asian team to date.