(Last of two-part series)<\/p>\n
As the 6th Micronesian Games nears, the Basketball Association of the Northern Mariana Islands is determined to provide the CNMI Men\u2019s National Basketball Team a venue to tune up for the quadrennial event.
\nAs reported earlier, head coach Rufino Aguon has already named eight cagers to the team, including Jeremy Sablan, James Lee, Steve Rasa, Mark Wallace, Mel Manibusan, Gus Palacios, Dan Barcinas, and Kelvin Fitial.
\nOther candidates are center Oscar Ada and power forward Ambrose Ogumoro, who are currently off-island. Also on the list are guards Aleric Aguon and John Sablan and forwards Jeremy Winkfield and James Villacrusis.
\nAguon stressed that his team will not get sidetracked with the competition in the 4th Annual Budweiser Cup BANMI Men\u2019s Island-wide Basketball League, which will kick off this Saturday at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium.
\nHe explained that while the team will be determined to win, his main concern is making sure his players execute their defensive and offensive plays in preparation for the Games.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a venue for the team to execute, because our goal is to play against the guys that are coming in,\u201d he said. \u201cI know for a fact that those guys coming in have been training\u2026but at the same time, most of them have been playing together for a long time. It\u2019s their national team and they kept it, so they have gelled. We still have to gel. We\u2019re putting a team together with 12 guys, but they\u2019re not really a team until they start playing together and understanding each other.
\n\u201cI am not going to sacrifice just winning a game over the education of the boys. I rather lose all the games in Bud Cup, and do better in the Micro Games. It\u2019s the big picture. If we win the games, it\u2019s fine as long as we follow the game plan. If we didn\u2019t execute, and win, they\u2019ll hear from me during practice. They need to gel as a team and the Bud Cup is a venue for these guys to understand each other and play as one unit and not as an individual,\u201d he added.
\nAside from the national team, the Bud Cup will feature 2006 Inter-Government Basketball League pennant champion Tinian, IGBL defending champion No Zone, UFO champion Samahang Ilokano at Pangasinense, three-time defending champion Ol\u2019Aces, and an all-star selection.
\n\u201cThese are the whose who in basketball and hopefully they can all come in and really give this boys a test. Yes, it\u2019s about bragging rights for most of these teams, but for the national team, it\u2019s not about bragging rights. Don\u2019t get me wrong, we\u2019re going to go and try to win every game. We\u2019re not going to be stepped on or whatever, but we\u2019re not going to sacrifice winning a game and not executing the way we\u2019re suppose to play,\u201d Aguon said.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to give my team a false impression that \u2018hey, you\u2019re ready\u2019, because you might play against a team and you beat them by so much and they cannot get the ball past half court, but that\u2019s not the team we\u2019re going to challenge in the Micro Games.\u201d
\nThe team practices five days a week\u2014Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays\u2014at the Northern Marianas College Gymnasium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the 6th Micronesian Games nears, the Basketball Association of the Northern Mariana Islands is determined to provide the CNMI Men\u2019s National cage team a venue to tune up for the quadrennial event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99903","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}