After more than a decade, Japeth Aguilar is back in Estonia as part of the Gilas Pilipinas squad that is preparing for the FIBA Basketball World Cup that the country will host from 25 August to 10 September.
In a conversation with Daily Tribune, Aguilar remembers his previous European training with his Gilas teammates, saying that it helped them build camaraderie and friendship needed to make a solid run in the World Cup in Seville, Spain in 2014.
“I have high respect for those guys,” Aguilar said, recalling the bond he forged with veterans like Jimmy Alapag, Marc Pingris and Ranidel de Ocampo as well as the rest of the team that won the silver medal in the FIBA Asia Men’s Championship at the Mall of Asia Arena in 2013.
“For me, if there are things we’ve learned from the previous Gilas team, it’s the chemistry that we developed during that training camp.”
“It became more evident when we played in the World Cup because of the toughness and cohesiveness developed by our team.”
True enough, the previous Gilas squad was a tough bunch.
With Alapag as skipper and former Brooklyn Net Andray Blatche as naturalized player, the Filipinos were able to push crack teams like Croatia, Argentina and Puerto Rico to the limit before yielding the victory.
In fact, they dragged Bojan Bogdanovic and the Croatians to overtime before surrendering a 78-81 decision and dropping another close encounter against Luis Scola and the Argentines, 81-85.
Then, they lost another heartbreaker to JJ Barea and the Puerto Ricans, 73-77, before wrapping up their preliminaries campaign with an 81-79 win over Senegal.
The 6-foot-9 Aguilar and 6-foot-10 June Mar Fajardo are the only members of that squad who are part of the current Gilas pool.
Aguilar said they are doing their best to serve as role models for their young teammates.
“I hope we can take a page out of it,” Aguilar said.
“Those guys, they’re leaders, Jimmy Alapag, LA Tenorio, Marc Pingris. We hope we can do the same with this current group.”
