San Miguel Beermen Basketball Games Updates

San Miguel Beermen Leaves For Qatar For Tuneup Games

The San Miguel Beermen are wasting no time in order to gear up their preparations for the next conference as the team left for Qatar to join a pocket tournament there. The Purefoods TJ Giants have earlier engaged the teams there winning against the Qatar Squad Al Sadd.

According to reports, the basketball squads that they will be facing there are composed of tall players. Such scenario is perfect so that the team will be able to see what adjustments they will do once they battle with tall PBA teams as more and more teams have beefed up their frontliners through recent trade and the draft.

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Beermen invade Qatar

Source: INQUIRER.net | September 17, 2008
by Musong R. Castillo, Romina Austria

San Miguel Beer will try to duplicate Purefoods' feat in Doha when it competes in a four-nation basketball tournament featuring the national basketball teams of Qatar and Egypt and a top club team of the host country.

Purefoods beat Qatar squad Al Sadd, 57-53, on Sept. 12 at the Al Gharrafa Center there. The victory against the team reinforced by American basketball players was the first for any Philippine ballclub.

Previous to that match, the TJ Hotdogs bowed to the national basketball teams of Qatar, 77-69, and Jordan, 78-67.

Qatar is holding a series of pocket tournaments to prepare their national basketball team for the Stankovic Cup in October which will be held in Kuwait.

"It is great that we are invited to such basketball tournaments because I really look for opportunities for my basketball players and the coaching staff to learn other styles of basketball play," said basketball coach Siot Tanquingcen of the basketball tournament slated Sept. 18-20.

The Beermen play all their matches at 10 p.m. local time, 3 a.m. here in Manila.

In a recent preseason match at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines gym in Manila, Jay Washington scored 18 points and Mick Pennisi had five rebounds to lift the Beermen to a 99-90 rout of the Red Bull Barakos.

San Miguel acquired the duo via separate trades, adding more offensive options other than Dondon Hontiveros, Danny Seigle and Danny Ildefonso.

Ginebra-less opening day

The PBA starts its 34th season on Oct. 4 at the Araneta Coliseum with crowd-darling Barangay Ginebra definitely not going to see action on opening day and the league seriously considering on letting Rain Or Shine play in the only scheduled game.

The league traditionally does not give opening day-playing privilege to a team that won the championship in its last tournament, in this case, the Gin Kings, after their classic seven-game conquest of the Air21 Express in the Fiesta Cup Finals.

And that has made the PBA's think-tank train its sights on Rain Or Shine, or specifically, Gabe Norwood and Solomon Mercado, the Elasto Painters' two prized rookies who are seen as the men who could finally turn their basketball fortunes around.

Right now, there are two sets of opening day games that will be decided upon by commissioner Renauld "Sonny" Barrios once he returns from the United States from a vacation.

Rain Or Shine debut

Though the league insider refused to disclose Rain Or Shine's opponent in "Set A," he said the Elasto Painters are not in the other schedule being considered to follow an extravagant opening-day rites.

Not only will a glimpse of how far the Elasto Painters could go in the Philippine Cup be seen when Norwood and Mercado debut on opening day, it will also serve as a measure of how well the two Filipino-Americans can draw the crowds.

Rain Or Shine, then known as the Welcoat Dragons, failed to make it past the elimination round in each of its first six tournaments in the basketball league, a streak the Elasto Painters certainly would want to snap as soon as they can.

Norwood, a 6-foot-5 point guard who was once hailed as the best sixth man in the US NCAA Division I, was picked first overall in the last Draft.

If ever, Rain Or Shine will be playing on opening day for the second time in three years, first enjoying the privilege in 2006 when it entered the basketball league. The Dragons got clobbered by Ginebra in that game.

Seven provincial games have been scheduled in the Philippine Cup, to be touched off by a first-ever outing in Victorias City, Negros Occidental, pitting the Coca-Cola Tigers against the Alaska Aces.