Perlas coach smells something fishy in SEAG schedule

KUALA LUMPUR – Perlas Pilipinas plays Singapore at 7:15 p.m. Sunday night at the start of the Southeast Asian Games women’s basketball competition, where the trickiest challenge comes at the halfway mark when the Filipinas face tough rivals Thailand and Malaysia back to back inside 16 hours.

Perlas coach Patrick Aquino said Malaysia is obviously using its privilege as host to the hilt, making things hard for the threats in its title defense.

“No doubt, they consider us the toughest threat. And look at the tough schedule they gave us,” said Aquino, pointing to six games they’re playing in six straight days.

“All the teams have their rest days. We’re given our rest day in the last day of competition,” Aquino added, smiling.

To make things worse, Perlas Pilipinas is scheduled to play Malaysia at 11 a.m. Thursday after its 8:15 p.m. duel with Thailand on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Malaysia takes a rest Wednesday before playing the Philippines on Thursday.

Malaysia and Thailand are the dominant teams in SEAG women’s play with a combined gold-medal haul of 17.

But the Philippines now looms as a threat to the dominance of the two teams with the Filipinas’ title run in the 2016 SEABA Championship in Malacca.

The Filipinas, however, must pace themselves to be ready for their back-to-back games against the Thais and the Malaysians.

Neither Perlas can afford to take for granted Singapore tonight, Indonesia tomorrow, Myanmar on Tuesday and Vietnam on Friday.

It’s a one-round-robin competition among seven teams with the top three automatically bagging the gold, silver and bronze medals.

Malaysia and Indonesia wound up tied at 4-1 then Thailand and the Philippines deadlocked at 3-2 in Singapore in 2015. Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand finished 1-2-3 on the winner-over-the-other rule.