UP AND AT ‘EM
Early in the second quarter, National U collected an offensive rebound, setting up rookie Tebol Garcia for a basket on a second possession.
University of the Philippines guard Gerry Abadiano, looking irritated by the extra chance the Maroons yielded, exhorted his teammates to keep boxing people off the boards.
Those around Abadiano know it’s something he often does.
“After every game, he talks to us about how we should respond after every win,” spitfire guard JD Cagulangan told the Inquirer late Wednesday evening. “We’re thankful that we have that type of a leader because he’s never lacking [in reminding the team what to do].”
Oh, by the way, the Maroons were up 24 on the Bulldogs when Abadiano gave his teammates a refresher on rebounding basics.
Those reminders will come in handy soon.
If UP’s 89-62 rout of NU on Wednesday was any indication, the Maroons’ biggest problem in the UAAP Season 87 men’s basketball tournament is how to keep their focus intact and their confidence grounded as they wait for probably the only game that will test them in the first round.
That match will be on Oct. 6, when UP faces defending champion La Salle in a battle of squads playing on a different plane this season.
The Maroons’ manhandling of the Bulldogs tied them with the Green Archers at 3-0 (win-loss). In between Wednesday’s yawner and the duel against La Salle, UP has games against Adamson and Far Eastern U, none of which pose a credible threat to the team’s spotless start to the season.
La Salle, on the other hand, has University of the East and University of Santo Tomas before the UP match.
30-point lead
To keep the Maroons motivated, the team constantly looks for lapses to clean up and then uses the next game in the schedule to see how much better it has become.
In its previous game, for example, UP trounced University of the East for three quarters before easing up in the fourth.
“We talked about it within the team, how we can bounce back because we did not finish well in our last game,” said forward Mark Belmonte, who had 14 points in 15 minutes against NU. “We were consistent this time until the end of the game.”
Belmonte had the fifth make of his first six attempts from the field in the first half and completed a three-point play that gave UP a 46-16 lead halfway through the second quarter.
That’s a 30-point lead in about 15 minutes of action.
Put that into context: It’s hard enough to score 30 points in 15 minutes when the average shooting rate of teams going into Wednesday’s doubleheader hovered around 37 percent and the average points-per-minute stood at around 1.7.
And UP led NU by 30 in 15 minutes of action.
That lead ballooned to 36 in the second half, with Cagulangan making sure that even when the third-stringers came in to mop up the win, the intensity remained high.
‘Leading by example’
“It’s leading by example because every time I’m on the court, I go all out. And no matter what the lead is, I still play [hard],” Cagulangan, who finished with 13 points, said. “I think I’ve shown to my teammates that we can’t be complacent no matter how big our lead is. And I show that by actions. I don’t need to say anything.”
UP came into the match with an average margin of 13 points—and that is expected to fatten up after the NU trashing.
And it’s no longer a stretch to say the Maroons can sleepwalk their way past their next two opponents and wake up with a clean record in time for the game against La Salle.
But with guys like Abadiano and Cagulangan constantly reminding the team of the little things that generate success, the Maroons won’t be caught with their eyes fixed on the Archers this early.
“There are so many things to learn every game [and against] all our opponents,” Cagulangan said. “We still need to focus on one game at a time.”
