CALL it a rebirth, renaissance or a rediscovery of its pride and self-respect.
The University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) 78th season is barely a week old but already the Fighting Maroons of the University of the Philippines (UP) are looking impatient to call in the alumni, gather around a bonfire and freely, unabashedly talk about a championship, not of past seasons but of the current one.
Two wins in two starts, and all of UP Diliman is riding a wave of nostalgia. In all the years that I covered the UAAP wars, back in my early sportswriting days, few fans cared to buy a general admission ticket and watch the Maroons grind out a game from the highest point of bleacher row.
They were not a sight to behold or a jolly team to watch. Their occasional show of fighting spirit seemed like a speck of light in a monotonous cascade of darkness.
But we cannot tell this to the current Maroons, who scored more wins in one week than their predecessors had compiled over the past three seasons. The Maroons had not won back-to-back games since 2005, and their wins came off championship-caliber teams that are the biggest names in the league.
First they whipped the Warriors of the University of the East during the season opener, 62-55, leading all the way, paced by Gelo Vito who buried three straight treys in the final canto to preserve the win. When faced by the highly touted La Salle Green Archers in their second outing, the Maroons’ fans thought the party would end right then and there.
They were mistaken. With the veteran guard Jett Manuel powering their hot start, the Maroons went up by 17 points once, 54-37. And when the Archers came charging back, they turned to their clutch shooting from the charity lane, hitting six of their last eight free throws, to get out of trouble.
There had been pre-season talk about how these sparkling Maroons were turned into title contenders under the tutelage of American coach Joe Ward. The team he inherited last year had sailed into Hades, and was swallowed by its eternal darkness for three years before it returned to the world of the living last year, in Season 77. The Maroons had been given up for dead for so long that the one victory they scored had sparked a celebratory bonfire, thrown by the university’s community, which crackled with the chatter of resurrection.
Since being called up to run the team practices early this year, Ward had peered into the soul of the team, and instantly recognized what was causing all its basketball pain. The Maroons had no dedicated basketball team to begin with. Ward once told an anecdote to an online writer to illustrate his point.
“One time, there were two players who were taking engineering courses, and they told me, ‘Coach, we cannot attend the practice because we have to attend important classes and review for the exam,’” he said. “I asked, ‘What?’” he added.
He ran the Maroons through a diagnostic test, like a patient, and came out with a startling verdict—the players needed to relearn the fundamentals of the game. “I’ve noticed that players were not taught the right way,” he told the interviewer. “It’s like the coaches before just rolled the ball and let them play without teaching them the right way.”
Ward is a skills trainer, but more than that he seems to me like a motivational coach, as well. In a university where education and social activism come first—and basketball an occasional distraction—he has inculcated the spirit of winning, the attitude of “trying hard each game.”
One of his early converts, and now a devout player who brings the right attitude to the game, is UP skipper JR Gallarza. The Maroons used to be peppered with pleas of “Kahit one win lang,” he said. He wouldn’t settle for that kind of unmentionable mediocrity anymore. In this new season the Maroons and their community “deserve numbers,” so much more than one, two or three wins.
Their new mind-set is, “Yes, we can win,” and their new head coach, Rensy Bajar, is aiming for the moon, trip to the Final Four. They might even get lucky and aim for the stars.
There was one recent tournament in Taiwan that sparked all this talk about the Final Four. They won three of four games against university teams in a pocket tournament in Taiwan. It was something special, and it gave them a foretaste of the future.
The team is built around a core led by Manuel, a veteran shooting guard, who is back after a two-year furlough, and the steady Paul Desiderio, Diego Dario, Henry Asilum, Mark Huruena and Gallarza. Dario and Desiderio are the most promising, having competed in the U-16 and U-17 Fiba Asia and Fiba World competitions.
Rookie Cheick Kone, a 6-foot-10 French-American who moved to the Philippines to play basketball, has a good grasp of the fundamentals, and could be a game changer if the Maroons get into the Final Four.
Past UP teams were never known to play strong defense. Not for this team. Defense is the name of its game and, as Dadio puts it succinctly, it is the “difference from last year to this year.” It could be the difference between mediocrity and excellence.
It would be too soon to say that these Maroons are shaping up into the image of their revered predecessor of 1986, the year UP last won the title. That was a win for the ages, because it broke UP’s decades of frustration and futility in a league it co-founded in 1937 with universities that had broken away from the NCAA.
Who would be this team’s new Benjie Paras, Ronnie Magsanoc and Eric Altamirano, and that silent hero, the late Ramil Cruz?