Gilas foes in Olympic qualifying known Wednesday

Gilas Pilipinas during the Philippines’ hosting of the 2013 Fiba Asia Championships. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

THE COUNTRIES that Gilas Pilipinas will face in the Fiba Wildcard Olympic Qualifying event will be known early this morning when the draw is held at the Fiba House of Basketball in Mies, Switzerland.

The Philippines won the right to host one of three qualifiers, which will be held on July 4 to 10, where a berth in the Rio de Janeiro Games will be on the line.

Fiba has broken down the 18 participating countries into eight from Europe (France, Serbia, Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Italy, Latvia and Czech Republic), three from Asia (Philippines, Iran and Japan), three from the Americas (Puerto Rico, Mexico and Canada), three from Africa (Angola, Tunisia and Senegal) and New Zealand from Oceania.

Sonny Barrios, the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas executive director, is in Mies to oversee the draw, which will happen around 2:30 a.m. in Manila.

“We are not informed of how the draw will be conducted but we understand it will be a modified draw based on geographical and quality principles,” said Barrios.

“We are expecting at least two European countries to be drawn in our group.  Fiba will not want to overload a group with countries from the same zone.  For instance, we don’t expect either Iran or Japan to be in our group.”