all up to us now

I must admit I was among those who felt real excited when the groupings for the FIBA-Asia Championships were announced last week.

The Philippines, in case you haven't heard, found itself in Group A, along with old rivals Japan and Korea plus expected-to-be-booted-out Sri Lanka (let's get straight to the point, shall we?).

Now this is not exactly a walk-in-the-park. Far from it. But compared to 2007 wherein we found ourselves holed up against China, Iran, and Jordan, one can understand why we're calling ourselves lucky this time around.

But that is not the primary reason why I suddenly felt like we could put up a better fight in this year's hostilities. At around the same time, FIBA also announced a new tournament format, which if we put in a nutshell, basically means that Team Pilipinas will have a total of 6 classification round games before the top 8 teams are decided (4 each from Groups A and B, and then another 4 from Groups C and D).

I really feel that this is more of a blessing to us than the actual groupings as I've always believed that an all-pro national team will never ever get accustomed to shorter elimination round formats in big tourneys such as these. In other words, the greater the number of games we play (before we plunge into the knockout stage), the better our chances are.

But of course, the classification stage is just half the battle (or exactly 40% if you're into math or just plain bored). Once the seedings are determined, then that's where the real fun--or real trouble--depending on how you look at it, begins.

I'm not trying to sound too prophetic here, but on paper, it looks like the following teams will enter the knockout stage: Iran, Korea, Philippines, and Japan from Groups A and B; China, Jordan, Lebanon, and Kazakhstan from Groups C and D. Depending on the seedings, those teams are expected to figure in do-or-die quarterfinal pairings to determine the Final Four, from which another set of win-or-go home match-ups will be played to come up with the top 3 teams that will advance to the 2010 FIBA World Championships.

Will RP be one of them?

Tough to say or even predict at this point. All I know is that the breaks are there. It's up to the team to grab their fair share. Or perharps even more of it.