PERLAS Pilipinas coach Patrick “Pat” Aquino said his team is hard at work preparing for coming tournaments. The team has trained inside and outside the country in preparation for two of the most-awaited games which are the FIBA Asian Women’s Cup and the Southeast Asia Games.
“For now, we getting ready for the FIBA-Asia,” Aquino said. “It’s our first time to be in Level One. So our competitors here will be big-time countries. And we’re hoping that we will maintain our status as Level One.”
The Philippine team is in a bracket with Japan, Australia and South Korea. The 2017 FIBA Asian Women’s Cup will be held July 23-29 in Bangalore, India.
Aquino also mentioned Perlas’ coordination with other teams as part of training.
The team has been playing against various high school boys’ teams in order to see their progress and also went to a mini-tournament in Malaysia last June.
Against high school teams, Perlas managed to score an average of 60-80 points which exceeded their coach’s expectations.
“The talent they have is not far (from other teams). And I always say to them that they do not know how you play and that the best strategy is to represent Filipinas.”
As for the teams competing in FIBA, Aquino said that Indonesia went to train for a month in the United States while Thailand will field their veteran players.
“We’re going to fight,” Aquino said. “We’ll prove to them that we deserve to be the champion this year, especially in the SEA Games.”
Perlas Pilipinas will be relying mostly on the same players and some new ones that are “younger but bigger”.
“They really play together as a team. This team is really something.”
Perlas Pilipinas will leave the country July 21 for FIBA while the SEA Games will be held on August 19-30 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The SEA Games is a biennial multi-sport event with participants from the 11 countries of Southeast Asia. The Southeast Asian Games Federation with supervision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic Council of Asia supervises the games.
