Christian Standhardinger will look to replicate his impressive showing in his previous appearance and help give Gilas Pilipinas a much-needed win in Monday’s FIBA World Cup Qualifiers match against Iran at the Mall of Asia Arena.
Set to fill the spot as naturalized player in lieu of Stanley Pringle, Standhardinger is slated to face the same team that saw him produce 30 points and 12 rebounds in Gilas’ 81-73 loss last September in Tehran.
A different outcome is what Standhardinger hopes to deliver, especially with Gilas in a precarious situation after dropping to a tie with Japan for third place in Group F at 5-4 with a shock 92-88 defeat to Kazakhstan at MOA.
“You guys know that my game is anything but perfect and I’m a little unconventional,” Standhardinger told reporters after Friday’s match where he watched as a spectator.
“But I do think that with my speed on the court, I hope I can help the team a little bit on Monday and hope that will be enough to win against Iran which is, I guess, a much, much better team than (Kazakhstan),” added the San Miguel Beer star.
Pringle put up 29 points for Gilas in a losing effort, though Guiao has already planned in advance of making the two split the naturalized player slot for the current window.
Guiao believes Standhardinger’s return will add some spunk that was missing from his big men against Kazakhstan.
“We will lose Stanley’s scoring, we will lose his aggressive and we will lose his leadership on the court,” Guiao said.
“But we will gain Christian’s quickness and his active play which we lacked (against Kazakhstan) with our bigs.
“So we’re hoping that with Christian, we’re able to remedy the defensive lapses that occurred because of our bigs being attacked by quicker bigs.” (Jonas Terrado)
