Well, this is a bit late.
But kindly allow me this bit of tardiness once since I got hungover by events, including my sister coming back home, birthday week and yes, thesis work.
Anyhow, let’s get rolling.
It’s already old that Japeth Aguilar has moved on and Rabeh Al-Hussaini is reunited with his college coach. It’s already old that all the SMC teams are floundering while the door mats are taking charge with invigorated basketball. So is the universe kind of uh… wrong?
I do not think so.
However, college stars getting reunited with their beloved teachers, the current head coaches of the teams they play for, that brings out then college fanboy in me. Well, in a sort of way. See, I grew up watching them get recognized in the amateur ranks alongside their head coaches who developed them, taught them, made them beasts. And to a purist like me, that is incomparable. And we’re talking about college basketball. I am more hardcore with it compared to pro basketball.
Okay so, clearly I am talking, rather, being hopefully gushing (if there’s such a combination of words), about Al-Hussaini’s trade to the Texters. I can’t help it. The Ateneo feel that team gives me: no yabang, all hard work, grabbing championships here and there, consistency, defense, defense and defense, man, it’s hard not to be converted. And yes, Coach Norman Black. I practically put the guy on the pedestal when it comes to coaching brains. I may rank him higher than the legendary Virgilio “Baby†Dalupan, another former coach of Ateneo, at the moment.
So yeah, with that, I’m converted from being a Purefoods (suck San Mig Coffee, that name is too cheesy and long) fan since I discovered basketball, to a Talk N Text fan. So I’m back in MVP’s fold eh? Not bad. Considering that I am really, really excited how Black can turn Al-Hussaini into a monster. Again.
Thinking to the pre-Total Black days, when he was just establishing his presence with the Blue Eagles, CNB, as I like to call him, had this huge headache to deal with in the form of a 6’7†man-child recruited from the “ghetto side ng Makati†as he puts it. This guy was the half-brother of Green Archer Carlo Sharma, and nobody imagined Rabeh Al-Hussaini blossoming into a fearsome force not just in the UAAP, but nationwide as well, in his last two playing years for the Blue and White. Nobody saw it coming in Season 71. They forgot to catch the number of that monstrous truck who rammed past everyone with punishment in thought and was garbed in Blue and White. Last thing they saw? His back, his shoulders, draped with arms trying to slow him down, to pull him down, stopping him from going up to put the leather into the hoop. That and him raising the trophy, the title, the culmination of Norman Black’s developmental powers and the MVP award as he powered Ateneo and carried them on his hulking shoulders.
Heaven knows what he can do under the tutelage of his former college coach and a hardened, magulang vet in Ali Peek and the best Power Forward in the Philippines, Ranidel de Ocampo. I hope he gets his head right this time around. And of course…
There’s only one thing left to do for the TNT brass.
Go get his frontcourt partner as well.
Give me Noy Baclao.
You can work that.
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