Sunday, June 9, 2013

On La Salle's coaching change


Am I surprised that La Salle changed their head coach with the college basketball season a couple of weeks away?

Yes, I am. However, not totally.

Do I agree? Of course not. While I am not privy to what goes on behind the scenes, I was a little surprised that after the Filoil loss to Ateneo, some members of team management wondered (away from the locker room), “What is wrong with our coaching staff? Is it a case of too many cooks in the kitchen?"

I thought they were odd questions to ask. It raised some red flags inside of me. At that time, it could have meant something. Maybe nothing. But in the light of the coaching change, yes, it meant something all right.

I can understand concerns after the back-to-back losses and three of their last four in the summer. But seriously? This is the pre-season. Whether those rumors of a move to Petron are true or not, and even if they are, are well still eyebrow raising. They should have done that before the summer. All that talk about reorganization does not fly. 

And the Petron coaching job is safe? Ato Agustin won one and a few conferences later, he was back as an assistant. The scuttlebutt is he’ll replace Olsen Racela as head tactician of the Blaze Boosters. Either that or Leo Austria will take the job.

I asked a couple of Green Archers before the Master Game Face All-Star Basketball Challenge last Saturday what they thought of the coaching change. They were really surprised but they have no choice but to just move forward.

I guess expectations are too high this season.


4 comments:

  1. funny how a loss to Ateneo sets the panic alarm like nothing else in DLSU.....

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  2. Right now, I'd like to think that, above all, the primary reason why there is a last minute reshuffle is because of the internal politics in Petron team management. SMB is still trying to figure out why the team is underperforming, despite having a star-studded lineup.

    It's pretty sad that La Salle got pulled into SMB's mess. A lot of my high school classmates who graduated from La Salle were looking forward to this season.

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  3. Sir, I think it's not with the cooks but it's a case of having a lot of choice ingredients that one cannot choose what to do with them in order to come up with a good recipe. It's obvious that DLSU is stockpiling, not only in terms of locals (they have Montalbo and Bolick among others) but also a bunch of college import players (Perkins et al.).

    The important question that DLSU failed to address in this regard, I think, is team chemistry. But then, they don't have a Coach Norman to do that dirty job.

    Nevertheless, we wish them well in the upcoming UAAP season. Actually, kinda not.

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    Replies
    1. They were referring to the coaches not the players.

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