San Miguel Alab Pilipinas coach Jimmy Alapag expressed satisfaction with his team’s performance despite a losing effort against Gilas Pilipinas in their tune-up match last Monday at the Meralco Gym.
Alab was able to make things competitive opposite the SEA Games-bound national squad before absorbing a 98-95 loss in the first of two exhibition matches before the start of the ASEAN Basketball League season.
“Tune-up games are always good barometers of just where we’re at as a team, especially conditioning-wise and rhythm-wise,” Alapag said. “But I’m really happy with what I saw.”
Fil-Americans Jason Brickman, Jeremiah Gray and Brandon Rosser, import Adrian Forbes and Louie Vigil made a good account of themselves despite missing the services of other reinforcements Renaldo Balkman and Khaliff Wyatt.
Balkman and Wyatt are expected to play in their second tune-up with Gilas on Monday at the same venue before Alab flies to Thailand later in the week.
“For us to play this first tune-up game, didn’t really know what to expect, really just wanted to get the guys out playing and running up and down. I’m really happy with the effort,” said Alapag.
The ABL’s lone Philippine team has been dealing with the lack of available tune-up games while still trying to fill its roster in time for the Nov. 17 opener against Mono Vampire in Nonthaburi, Thailand.
Alab recently added Fil-Australian Jordan Heading and his former national U-16 teammate Andrei Caracut, who recently completed his UAAP career with La Salle.
Also signed was former PBA veteran Aaron Aban while sources said Alab plans to add two more players from the collegiate ranks.
“This is really our first time playing five-on-five because even in practice we don’t have a full squad yet,” said Gray. “So we finally got to go up-and-down together as a team for the first time and we see some pretty good glimpses as a team.
“Of course, we got a lot of things to work on, but it was a good experience for us to play a team like the national team,” he added.
Alab aims to make up for its failure to defend the crown last season when it was swept by Hong Kong Eastern in the quarterfinals. (Jonas Terrado)
