By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña
Ilonggo basketball fans, another prestigious hoops league is set to make waves in Iloilo City this coming October 15, 2023.
The Ilonggo Basketball League (IBL), organized and managed by the Ilonggo Sports Event Management Services (ISEMS), will open its inaugural season tomorrow to be held at the Pavia Multipurpose Gym.
ISEMS will be formally opening the ceremony at 1 PM to be followed by the game day schedule featuring the eight participating teams.
These teams are Iloilo Mission Hospital, Toyota Iloilo Inc., Pavia LGU, Pryce Gas Iloilo Inc., Coca-Cola Bottlers Inc., BANCON and Mega Panay, Leadgen, and Carelon Global Solutions.
According to ISEMS, the games will be played every Sunday and will be following a single round-robin format.
Under the said format, the top four teams after the preliminary stage will automatically gain semifinal spots.
The top two teams will then carry a twice-to-beat advantage against their lower-seed opponents. The championship stage will then be played in a best-of-three series.
ISEMS announced that the championship squad will be receiving a cash prize of 25,000 pesos and the first-ever IBL title trophy.
Players to watch in the upcoming IBL season are Ilonggo veteran hoopers Cris Loyola, Andee Ticzon, Reuben Tagubilin, Adrian Dellaban, Ramer Amuan, Paul Poral, and Inno Miclat.
ISEMS would like to thank their partnering organizations: Municipality of Pavia, Daily Guardian, PhilWeb Corporation, Converge Fiber X, Puregold-Tindahan ni Aling Puring, Shepherd Realty Corporation, JLink IT Solutions, and Mike’s Lomihouse.
All games will be broadcast live by ISEMS on their Facebook streaming and will be uploaded to their YouTube channel.