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| Our only concern here is, Pingris, Fajardo, Aguilar AND Slaughter are all playing HEAVY minutes this conference (Photo credit to the owner) |
Ranidel de Ocampo is out recovering from a near-serious injury. Ian Sangalang has been absent from majority (if not all) of the team's only Monday practices. Paul Lee is still out. L.A. Tenorio for the most part of his PBA run this season, has been off. Collegiate standout and 2x UAAP MVP Kiefer Ravena has officially been added to the pool.
That makes three guys who will have to make up for lost time should they wish to rejoin the group, another guy who seems to be having some trouble getting back to top form and a young blood who fits the bill to a "T" as far as a well-rounded, highly-skilled national player is concerned, but in our honest opinion is probably NOT the guy we wanted to add right now.
To refresh your memory, this is how our current pool looks like:
PG
Jayson Castro
LA Tenorio
Paul Lee
Ryan Reyes
Ryan Reyes
Kiefer Ravena
Terrence Romeo
Marcio Lassiter
Jeff Chan
Calvin Abueva
Gabe Norwood
Matt Ganuelas-Rosser
PF
Marc Pingris
Japeth Aguilar
Troy Rosario
June Mar Fajardo
Greg Slaughter
We put a strike through on de Ocampo and Sangalang for the reason/s stated above, which trims the roster down to 16. While we still have a lot of able-bodied bigs in the fold, we are not too sold on Aguilar being our 1st option at the power forward spot with de Ocampo's absence. Or that we would go with Rosario right away.
Andray Blatche will come in to power us back to 17, so Coach Tab Baldwin will just need to make a few cuts mostly at the PG spot where it seems to be a bit too crowded.
If it were up to us, we would down size the pool to 12 guys, right now:
Castro, Lee, Romeo, Lassiter, Chan, Abueva, Norwood, Aguilar, Pingris, Fajardo, Slaughter, Blatche
We would love to include Tenorio, but if Lee is healthy and ready to go he can take care of mapping out our offense. Castro has also improved in that category, while we just cannot afford to sleep on Romeo's explosive scoring ways which could take some teams by surprise.
Rosser is out only because Aguilar is in. And Aguilar loves to play small forward so. Yeah.
But right now, we hope that Coach Tab could invite a few more players, just to make sure that he has enough warm bodies and 2 actual teams (10 vs 10) during practice.
A few names at the top of our heads are: Raymond Almazan (for Sangalang), Sonny Thoss (for De Ocampo), Alex Cabagnot (seriously, why is this guy never on Gilas' radar???), Arwind Santos (good or bad, he's still other-worldly) and Sean Anthony (as another Abueva-like guy).
What do you think? Should Coach Tab invite a few more players? Or are they good? @kilikilishot
Love the proposed subs, but I don't think Anthony is eligible. He was born in Canada, and I don't think he got a PHL passport before 16. Could be wrong, though.
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