And there is the face that makes Filipino basketball fans . . . that includes everyone in the country I think . . . to go crazy with excitement. As I tried to work out the criteria for who to include in the updates section I skimmed through pages and pages of posts on the interbasket.com forums and followed up with hours of google searches. In the end I decided I wanted to find players in Asia who meant something to the future of the game in their home country (Jeremy Tyler is the best example of this) and find Asian players currently playing outside of Asia who would have the biggest impact when they came back to Asia. Banchero's name is all over the internet as a Filipino-American who can really play ball. As I mentioned in another post, covering Filipino basketball scares me. People care about the sport so much in the Philippines that I can only imagine what the response would be if I get something wrong. Be nice Philippines!

Banchero plays point guard for the Seattle Pacific University Falcons. He is the leading scorer,and the undisputed star of the team. In his first eight games this season he has averaged 25.5 ppg, 5.6 apg, 3.6 rpg,and 1.5 spg. He scorers from all areas of the floor and shoots a relatively high percentage for a shoot-first guard. It must be noted that SPU is a Division II school, but still the competition he plays is better than almost any league in Asia.In 2010 he was added to the prospective player list for Smart Gilas, signifying he is firmly on the radar of those in charge of basketball in the Philippines.

On December 30th Chris and the Falcons will begin the Conference portion of their schedule. My goal with his updates is to provide brief summaries of how he is playing and direct links to more information and hopefully video and radio feeds. Check back here often or watch my twitter account (asiabballupdate) for updates.

Happy Holidays!