Four-time PBA MVP winner June Mar Fajardo, longtime national mainstays Gabe Norwood and Japeth Aguilar, and rookie sensation Kiefer Ravena lead 10 PBA stars serving duty to Gilas Pilipinas in its second FIBA World Cup qualifiers "away" game versus Team Australia in Melbourne Thursday.
Matthew Wright, Allein Maliksi, Calvin Abueva, RR Pogoy, Kevin Alas and Carl Bryan Cruz also hook up with the Gilas team that battles the Boomers for the solo lead in Group B play.
Game time is at 7:35 p.m. (4:35 p.m. in Manila).
Completing the Gilas 12 versus Australia are naturalized player Andray Blatche and Gilas cadet Abu Tratter as national coach Chot Reyes decided to rest Jayson Castro and Jio Jalalon.
With that, Reyes has effectively affected a complete changing of the guards at the Gilas backcourt as he tasked Ravena and Alas to man the point in Melbourne.
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Ravena and Alas were also in the lineup in the opening window of the qualifiers last November but merely served as backup to Castro, Gilas' ace guard from the 2013 FIBA Asia Championship.
The TNT KaTropa main man was Gilas' lead gun in their sweep of Japan and Chinese Taipei, averaging 20 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5.0 assists.
"Jayson twisted his ankle during their games against Phoenix and Ginebra. As of yesterday, he tried to go hard in practice but still he wasn't (100 percent) there at all. So we decided that Jayson is going to sit out, together with Jio who's also feeling some slight pain in his leg," said Reyes on ESPN5.
"We decided to play the guys who aren't experiencing any nagging injuries at this point," Reyes added.
Alas and Ravena are coming off big games with the NLEX Road Warriors, leading the team to an outright playoff entry in the PBA Philippine Cup.
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The NLEX backcourt tandem combined for nine three-pointers and a total of 48 points as NLEX roared to a fourth straight win with a 93-90 nipping of Blackwater Sunday.
"Both of them have been playing very well in the PBA. And you all know Kiefer accounted himself very well in the first window. It's hard not having our top point guard, but this is an opportunity for Kiefer to step in and for Kevin to get a lot more minutes than he usually gets," Reyes said.
"Like we always say, not one guy can fill in the big shoes of Jayson, but every other guy collectively can do so. That's the approach we're going to take tomorrow," Reyes also said.
