INQUIRER Sports

AGE-CHEATING HAS BECOME A grave concern in the ongoing Fiba-Asia U16 Men?s Championship in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

After the team managers? meeting held before the Philippines opened its bid against Japan Thursday night, Nokia U16 Team Pilipinas manager Joel Lopa said officials of three Middle East nations complained that some countries were fielding players beyond the required age limit.

?Everybody was worried about possible age-cheating,? said Lopa, who represented the Filipinos in the two-hour meeting together with Bernie Atienza, chair of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas competitions committee.

Basketball executives from Kuwait, Jordan and Syria have asked Fiba Asia secretary general Dato Yeoh Choo Hock to conduct tests on suspected athletes.

Insiders claimed China brought its U19 team, which has a pool of players born before 1993. With the lack of a stringent screening process, Fiba-Asia was relying only on the passport of players to determine their eligibility.

?We just can?t let the issue affect the morale of the boys,? said RP coach Eric Altamirano, whose team was in the thick of battle with the Japanese at presstime.

?Whether other teams are cheating or not is none of our business. Everybody is in high spirits. We?re here to win the crown,? he added.

China is favored to secure one of two slots to the 2010 Fiba U17 World Championship in Hamburg, Germany, by fielding a squad with an average height of 6-foot-4. China is bracketed with Saudi Arabia, India and Jordan in Group A.

The Filipinos have already tested the mettle of the Chinese U16 squad in a series of tuneup games in China last June and scouted its top players in the first Asian Youth Games in Singapore the following month.

After Japan, the Nationals will take on Kazakhstan today and Bahrain tomorrow.