Tamaraws: The making of a champ

MANILA, Philippines - FEU’s return to the UAAP senior men’s basketball throne wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions of PBA five-time Coach of the Year Chot Reyes and former UAAP champion coach Bert Flores, the behind-the-scenes heroes to whom Tamaraws team owner Anton Montinola paid tribute the other day.

“Chot was the architect,” Montinola said. “Three years ago, (FEU athletic director) Mark (Molina) and I approached him for advice on how to rebuild our basketball program. He suggested to bring in Nash (Racela) as head coach and his son Josh as assistant. Then, we added Eric (Gonzales), who’s close to Nash, as an assistant. We retained Johnny (Abarrientos) in the coaching staff and Richie (Ticzon) and Gilbert (Lao) joined, too. Lately, Jojo (Lastimosa) came in as our program head for the juniors. That’s quite an all-star cast.”

As for Flores, he recruited FEU’s Big Three from the provinces – Mac Belo from Cotabato, Roger Pogoy from Cebu and Mike Tolomia from Zamboanga. Flores coached the Tams to their previous title in 2005 and works out of the school’s athletics office in Morayta. He also coaches the Lady Tamaraws who are in the process of rebuilding.

“Bert goes around the country looking for hidden gems,” said Montinola. “He loves visiting provinces and far-away places. Bert has an eye for talent and is very loyal, a good soldier. He also discovered Ping Excimiano in Olongapo. We owe a lot to Chot and Bert for our championship this season.”

Although FEU failed to beat UST twice in the eliminations, the Tams wouldn’t be denied in the best-of-three Finals against the Growling Tigers. “In a sense, we were like UST last season when we ran out of gas and got clobbered by NU in the Finals,” said Montinola. “This season, UST overachieved and wasn’t really slated to reach the Finals. That was our situation last year. After Game 3 of the Finals the other day, I greeted all the UST players for a classic series and hugged (UST sports director) Fr. (Ermito) De Sagun. Kudos to UST. As for me, it was total relief when it ended.”

Montinola has sat on the FEU bench since 1989 and admitted he had doubts on whether the Tams would pull it off after a 10-year drought. “This victory is dedicated to the long-suffering FEU community, our players from previous teams, our students who would camp out to wait for game tickets and my mother (FEU chair emeritus Dr. Lourdes Montinola) who turned 88 last Nov. 25, the day we won Game 1 as a birthday gift for her,” said Montinola. FEU is celebrating its championship with a campus gathering starting at 5 p.m today and 20,000 to 30,000 students are expected at the quadrangle for the festivities.

Montinola said the Tams learned a valuable lesson from almost making it to the top last season. “We fell short against NU in the Finals,” he said. “So this year, we deliberately managed the minutes of our players. You can’t anticipate injuries so you’ll never know whom to turn to. We wanted to make sure we had our best players ready to go in the final minutes of every game. In Game 3 of the Finals this year, UST had a 16-0 burst in the fourth quarter but we had a 14-3 ending from six points down in the last two minutes. It was the same in Game 1 when we were up by 14 then UST led by one before we won it. Despite managing their minutes, Mac and Pogoy cramped and that only shows you how physically and mentally exhausting is the Finals.”

Montinola said to prepare for this season’s title run, the Tams had to change their mindset. “We’ve always had great talent but we couldn’t win consistently,” he said. “This year, we were determined to excel as a team. We patterned ourselves after the Golden State Warriors. We wanted to be highly-entertaining with a lot of ball and man movement. We wanted to play selfless basketball and develop a character that would go beyond individuals. You’ll notice that no FEU player was named to the UAAP mythical five. That was fine with us. The most important thing was we wanted to win as a team.”

Montinola said he’ll cherish the championship as extra special. “We waited 10 long and painful years for this,” he said. “We experienced so many disappointments along the way. In previous seasons, we saw how we couldn’t sustain our effort because of a shallow rotation. Today, it’s become very difficult to recruit with tough competition from other schools. It’s been a long time since the glory days of Arwind (Santos). For us, it was now or never this year with six of our players finishing their UAAP eligibility, namely, Mac, Mike, Pogoy, Francis Tamsi, Russell Escoto and Achie Inigo.”

Montinola said major adjustments had to be made in beating UST in the Finals. “Prince (Orizu) was our X-factor,” he said. “Prince wasn’t effective in our two losses to UST in the eliminations but in the Final Four, he really stepped up. He encouraged and got (Karim) Abdul to take jumpshots. Gilbert (Lao) did a good job of prepping Prince. Pogoy was another critical piece and his string of points in the last 1 1/2 minutes of Game 3 turned the tide. It came down to playing tough team defense for four quarters. In the eliminations, we had our weak moments in the third quarter of every game so we fixed that. We were dominant off the boards, averaging in the 50s compared to UST’s 30s or 40s. When we were down in the last few minutes of Game 3, we relied on our Big 3. But our defense on Kevin (Ferrer) was huge. We put Mac and Pogoy on him instead of smaller guys and managed to hold him to six points after that unbelievable performance in Game 2.”

Montinola said he’s optimistic of FEU’s chances next season. “We’ll be strong inside with Prince and Reymar Jose then we’ve got (Monbert) Arong, Ron (Dennison) and Richard (Escoto) coming back,” he said. “We also have two Fil-New Zealanders in the lineup along with our two Fil-Norweigians, Ken and Steve Homqvist. What’s nice about the UAAP is we’re all friends. The night of Game 3, our players and some UST players got together at the Fort. Maybe, they’ll be teammates in the coming PBA D-League just like our players and some NU players were teammates last season. The night before Game 3, Fr. De Sagun and I were together with the UAAP Board for dinner.”