2 Cebu cage stars in Phl team for FIBA-Asia U16 tilt

CEBU, Philippines - Two Cebuano basketball stars form part of the Philippine Under-16 team that will see action in the FIBA-Asia U16 Championship set to unfold today in Tehran, Iran.

They are Arnie Padilla from the Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu (SHS-AdC) Magis Eagles and Paul Desiderio from the University of the Philippines (UP) Maroons. Desiderio was a former Juniors MVP while playing for the University of the Visayas (UV) Baby Lancers in the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation, Inc. (CESAFI).

They will be joined in their Iran joust by Ateneo's Mike and Matt Nieto and Jolo Mendoza, La Salle-Greenhills' Carlo Abadeza and Mike dela Cruz, Far Eastern U's Richard Escoto, UPIS's Diego Dario, San Sebastian's Enzo Navarro, Beacon's Mikel Panlilio and Hope's Jolo Go.

The team left Monday night, hoping to duplicate, if not surpass, the country's fourth place finish in the first two editions of the event.

The Filipinos, mentored by former Ateneo high school coach Jamike Jarin, drew Kazakhstan and Chinese Taipei in Group D and had automatically made the second round along with Group C's India, Japan and Jordan since they are only three each in their respective brackets. Groups A and B have four teams each.

Group A is composed of reigning back-to-back champion China, Bahrain, Hong Kong and Syria while Group B is comprised of Iran, Korea, Malaysia and Thailand.

"We're going there to do battle and make the country proud," Jarin said before the team left over the weekend.

The Nationals drew a first round bye and will only get to play on Day Two set at late Thursday, 12 midnight (Phl time) against the taller, bigger Kazakhs before tangling with the Taiwanese on Friday also at 12 midnight.

Using the same format as last August's FIBA-Asia Championship at the MOA Arena where our Gilas-Pilipinas team took the silver and booked a spot in the 2014 World Cup in Spain, the Phl will join five other teams in the second round where it will play the three Group C qualifiers once.

The top four of this group will then advance to the semis facing the other four quarterfinal entrants in the other bracket based on seeding.

Jarin's charges made it this far after sweeping the Southeast Asian Basketball Association U16 Championship in Yogyakarta, Indonesia last July.

In the biennial event's first two stagings, the Phl finished fourth in Johor Bahru in 2009 and Nah Thrang, Vietnam two years after.— EBV with Philippine STAR News Service (FREEMAN)