Matthew Aquino is expected to go all out and prove his mettle after being invited to join the 24-man pool for the Japanese national basketball team.
FORMER National University center Matthew Aquino and son of Philippine basketball great Marlou Aquino, has been tapped to join Japan Basketball’s national team Akatsuki Five’s 24-man pool for the 2021 FIBA World Cup Qualifiers.
The 6-foot-8 Filipino-Japanese player received an invitation for the first window of the 2023 FIBA World Cup Asian Qualifiers and announced that he formally accepted the invitation this week.
Aquino made the announcement through his Japanese B. League team Shinshu.
“I am honored to be selected as a candidate for the Japanese national team,” said Aquino in a statement.
Another player who was invited is Aquino’s teammate Yuta Okada.
Completing the pool are Kosuke Takeuchi (Utsonomiya), Takatoshi Furukawa (Akita), Ryuichi Kishimoto (Ryukyu), Makoto Hiejima (Utsonomiya), Aki Chambers (Gunma), Luke Evans (FE Nagoya), Yuma Fujii (Kawasaki), and Yutaro Suda (Nagoya).
They are joined by Tenketsu Harimoto (Nagoya), Masaaki Morikawa (Yokohama), Kengo Nomoto (Gunma), Yuki Togashi (Chiba), Leo Vendrame (Shibuya), Shuta Hara (Chiba), Shuto Ando (Tokyo), Takumi Saito (Nagoya), Keita Imamura (Ryukyu), Elliot Donley (Osaka), Zack Moore (Osaka), Ryo Terashima (Hiroshima), Avi Schafer (Mikawa), and Yudai Nishida (Mikawa).
Starting last Monday, the team has been at the Ajinomoto National Training Center where they will stay for two weeks, as they prepare for their games against China on the 27th and the 28th of this month in Sendai.
Aquino has only played one game in the B. League but with the opportunity given by the national team, he will do his best to complete the final 12-man line up for his World Cup dreams.
While Aquino does not have a Japanese mother or father, he obtained his Japanese nationality because his lineage traces back to his maternal grandmother, whose surname is Toma, and whose citizenship has been passed on to his mother.
This made his travelling in and out of Japan easy as he holds a Japanese passport, and his signing with Shinshu Brave Warriors a much easier process not as an import, but a local player.
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