A pair of Women’s National Basketball League squads — the Keilor Thunder and the Casey Cavaliers — are out to provide Gilas Pilipinas Women squad top-level competition before it plunges into action in the FIBA Women’s Asia Cup starting 26 June at the Sydney Olympic Park in Australia.
The Filipinas are set to leave on Saturday for Melbourne for a brief training camp in which they will face elite Australian teams in the final leg of their preparation for the tourney that serves as qualifier for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Four teams are expected to punch a ticket in the Summer Games and the Philippines, which had been promoted to Level 1 of the FIBA Asia is hoping to stay in the elite level to make an Olympic appearance for the first time since 1972.
The Melbourne training camp, capped by a pair of friendly matches, will serve as a gauge that will determine Gilas’ level of preparation with two weeks left before the prestigious tourney.
Casey, a team from NBL 1 South, is led by the core of Taylah Giliam, Lauren Van Kleunen, Taylah Simmons, Esra McGoldrick and Rachel Bell.
Bell, a 5-foot-10 guard, averaged 17.3 points and 5.5 rebounds per game in the previous WNBL season while McGoldrick, who originated from New Zealand, is a 6-foot-2 forward and averaged in double-double this season — 12.5 points and 10.5 rebounds per game.
Simmons is a 6-foot-1 small forward, who averaged 11.5 points and 6.3 rebounds per game.
Van Kleunen, an American who also played in Europe, serves as the Cavaliers’ leading scorer with close to 19 points per game.
Giliam is a 5-foot-8 guard, averages 13 points, 4.1 assists and a steal.
Meanwhile, Keilor is a team from NBL 1 South and the brunt of its production comes from Japanese star Ai Yamada, who averages 15.5 points and a steady 51.4 percent shooting from the three-point area while also distributing 4.7 assists per game.
Vanessa de Jesus, Gilas Pilipinas’ naturalized player from Duke University, will join the cagebelles in their Melbourne training.
De Jesus will be the latest naturalized player of the Gilas women’s team after Kelly Hayes, who won the gold medal in the 30th Southeast Asian Games in Manila.
