Fil-American to boost Titans’ bid in D-League

MANILA, Philippines — The AMA Titans have signed first round draft pick Fil-American Joshua Munzon,  who is expected to give the school-based team a better fighting chance in the PBA D-League which fires off this month.

Titans head coach and AMA athletic director Mark Herrera told The STAR Munzon, who strutted his wares with California State University in the NCAA Division II and Saigon Heat and Malaysia Dragons in the ASEAN Basketball League, has been signed along with Troy Rike of NU, Andre Paras of UP and Kib Montalbo of La Salle, who will join the school-based team in the upcoming league where a record 20 teams are competing.

Munzon headlines 60 others who were selected by eight teams in the draft which concluded after  20 rounds.

Munzon turned 24 on draft day Jan. 14, but was not around as only coaches and team representatives were present in the event.

AMA assistant coach Edwin Ancheta said Munzon’s numbers and highlight reels in the ABL prompted the team to pick him as No. 1 after seeing his name in the list of draftees.

“He will be a big help to AMA. We saw his highlights. He scores almost 25 points per game so hopefully he will also produce the same numbers when he plays in the D-League,” said Ancheta.

Marinerong Pilipino picked La Salle’s Leonard Santillan at No. 2, Go for Gold-CSB selected Jeremiah Pangalangan at third, last season’s back-to-back runner-up Che’Lu Bar and Grill chose Adamson forward Sean Manganti at No. 4, Wangs Basketball picked Rike at fifth (later released to AMA), Diliman College selected Kristoffer Torrado at sixth, Trinity University of Asia picked Christian Nidoy at seventh while McDavid chose Jerome Villanueva at eighth in the first round.

Drafted in the later rounds were La Salle’s Kib Montalbo (second round, first pick by AMA), Centro Escolar University’s Orlan Wamar (third round, second pick by Marinerong Pilipino), CESAFI MVP Rey Suerte (third round, fourth pick by Che’Lu), Ateneo’s Anton Asistio (fourth round, second pick by Marinerong Pilipino) and University of the Philippines’ Juan Gomez de Liaño (sixth round, fourth pick by Che’Lu Bar and Grill).

Only eight of the 20 teams joined the draft as Ateneo, San Beda, St. Clare, CEU, Batangas-EAC, Perpetual Help, Far Eastern, Santo Tomas, National U, Letran, San Sebastian and Enderun will each be fielding in a complete 15-man varsity team.

One hundred and fifty-one hopefuls joined the annual draft.