A week away from their scheduled departure for the third window of the FIBA World Cup Asian Qualifiers, 20 players showed up for Gilas Pilipinas' practice at the Meralco Gym on Monday night.
Led by naturalized Filipino Andray Blatche, the group featured a good mix of Gilas veterans and members of the "23 for 2023" pool.
The PBA players who showed up were Calvin Abueva, Allein Maliksi, Matthew Wright, RR Pogoy, Terrence Romeo, Baser Amer, Gabe Norwood, June Mar Fajardo, Jayson Castro, Carl Bryan Cruz, Jio Jalalon, and Troy Rosario. Japeth Aguilar was not able to practice as Ginebra played Sunday night and has a game scheduled for Wednesday.
Abu Tratter, Ricci Rivero, Prince Rivero, Kobe Paras, Troy Rike, Vince Tolentino, and JJ Alejandro were the youngsters who were also present.
"We're far from being close to prepared," admitted Gilas head coach Chot Reyes. "Our opponent Taiwan has been in Korea, playing tune-up games since last week so we're still far from that level but the good thing is we're used to this situation."
The current setup of the FIBA competition allows teams to adjust their lineup every window so they could keep their opponents guessing. However, the limitations with the time they have on their hands has made this difficult to do, Reyes said.
"We're going to bank on our familiarity with each other and the system so we could not add new players because it will be impossible for them to assimilate what we do with the short preparation time," he said. "This has been the situation from the start so we'll just have to make do with what we have."
The training of Gilas touched on some plays that Australia run but was mostly focused on dealing with Chinese Taipei for their game on June 29 at the Taipei Heping Basketball Gymnasium, which is already marked as sold out on FIBA's website.
Gilas defeated Chinese Taipei, 90-83, on November 27 of last year at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum during the first window.
"They've recalled a lot of their veterans. They've expanded their pool to 18 or 20 players," added Reyes. "We're expecting to see new but familiar faces. Several of their mainstays did not play in the previous windows but are now in this pool. That is what we have to prepare for and hopefully the three days we'll be spending there will help."