MANILA, Philippines – FIBA Basketball World Cup vets Kiefer Ravena, Troy Rosario, RR Pogoy and CJ Perez assume the roles of leaders to a new-look Gilas Pilipinas team bound for the Asia Cup Qualifiers against Indonesia.
The four, remnants of the old guard that battled heavyweights like Italy and Serbia in the 2019 world meet, provide the international experience to the latest Gilas batch infused with young blood as part of buildup for future big battles.
Aside from skipper Ravena and his World Cup batchmates, Philippine coach Mark Dickel also tapped pros and former Nationals Poy Erram, Abu Tratter and Justin Chua for added veteran presence as the team tackles the Indons on Sunday at Mahaka Arena in Jakarta.
Set to get their feet wet in the first window of Group A are youngsters Isaac Go, Thirdy Ravena, Dwight Ramos, Juan Gomez de Liano and Matt Nieto — the top prospects for the Gilas program for the 2023 World Cup that the country is co-hosting.
"It's a mixture of youth and experience," said Dickel of his 12-man hybrid team.
"Obviously the veteran players are the ones that played internationally before, we're going to lean on them and the young players have all played for Batang Gilas and age groups before and so they have an idea what it takes and get to find that out," he added.
According to Dickel, they have formed the best possible group for the job at hand.
"We felt the PBA players provided a really, really good base to build off on, and the other five young players will complement them. We feel this will give us the best chance to do well in this window," he added.
Gilas will have two more practices Thursday and Friday morning before departing for Indonesia 9 p.m. Friday.