{"id":371961,"date":"2022-07-07T06:02:46","date_gmt":"2022-07-06T20:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=371961"},"modified":"2022-07-07T06:02:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T20:02:46","slug":"rollers-take-part-in-all-islanders-tourney-in-az","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/rollers-take-part-in-all-islanders-tourney-in-az\/","title":{"rendered":"Rollers take part in all-islanders tourney in AZ"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
Rollers reached the semifinals of the 2022 Arizona Asia-Pacific Islanders Men\u2019s Basketball Tournament held recently in Chandler, Arizona. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A team made up mostly of Rollers alumni took part in the 2022 Arizona Asia-Pacific Islanders Men\u2019s Basketball Tournament in Chandler, Arizona.<\/p>\n

The team, simply named Rollers, was made up of brothers Prince and Angelo Factor, June Alipio, William Camacho, Markel Toves, Jun Fidelino, Derrick Atalig, Allan Okaya, Manny Matagolai, John Capuyon, and James Kintz.<\/p>\n

Rollers started things off with a 36-16 win over EBK as Prince Factor and Matagolai poured in 14 points apiece.<\/p>\n

They then made it two straight after nipping Palau\u2019s P4L, 39-35, with Factor again leading the charge with 16 markers and Alipio adding 14 points.<\/p>\n

Rollers stumbled in its third game against Pacific Rim as they lost 49-61 with Alipio and Factor firing 15 and 12 points, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the loss, the Rollers finished pool play with a 2-1 win-loss record and secured the No. 1 seed for the playoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rollers steamrolled past No. 4 seed WAQAB in the quarterfinals, 62-47, with Alipio scoring 11 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The team, however, bowed to eventual runner-up Typhoon in the semifinals, 33-35, with Factor leading their losing cause with 8 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Typhoons would eventually bow to P4L, 38-53, in the championship game of the API\u00a0 basketball tourney.<\/p>\n

Despite missing out on the championship, two Rollers players made it to the All Tournament First Team as Factor and Alipio joined Typhoon\u2019s SamDee Samson Setik, PHX- RMI\u2019s Byron N. Ezelda Thomas, and P4L\u2019s Nick Borja on the selection.<\/p>\n

Rollers founder Joe Diaz said he couldn\u2019t be more proud of his former wards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just proud of our boys out there. These boys grew up from being young kids to young adults. Now they\u2019re living out there and attending school and working. There\u2019s a lot of them out there in Las Vegas and Arizona and pretty much some of them flew in just to be part of the tournament representing Rollers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diaz said it just blows his mind that former Rollers players are still representing their old club in the U.S. mainland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey really stood up for it (Rollers). It\u2019s amazing to see our boys forming and taking ownership of the club out there. They played for Rollers and they\u2019ve been Rollers since they were young kids. I\u2019m just very proud of them that even though they\u2019re busy with school and work they still formed a team and reached the semifinals repping the Rollers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sammy Setik, who is one of the organizers of the 2022 Arizona Asia-Pacific Islanders Men\u2019s Basketball Tournament, said seeing Rollers take part in the competition was like deja vu.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really excited for the Rollers when they came out. Everytime I see our own people it just reminds me of home. I\u2019ve known Prince since he was a young boy as I played for the Guam junior nationals. It was a good thing they came out and took part in our tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setik said he formed the Asia-Pacific Islanders Men\u2019s Basketball Tournament way back in 2016 when he first came to the U.S. mainland.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy vision was to put everyone [from the islands]\u00a0 together and not forget where we came from and share the culture and share the game we love. We come from different islands and races but we share one thing and that\u2019s one ocean together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A team made up mostly of Rollers alumni took part in the 2022 Arizona Asia-Pacific…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":371952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}