WATCH: UAAP Primer: UP Maroons whipping boys no more?

University of the Philippines

How do we start from this? You have a sophomore as your leading returning scorer with 7.8ppg, shooting 40 percent from the field. Gone are Sam Marata and everybody's Tito Raul, Raul Soyud, who put up double digit outputs on a team that is horrid on both ends of the floor. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. Gone are the days when there is actually some fight in the Fighting Maroons. Yes, it's not what they're good at, but still, emulating the Philadelphia 76ers in tank mode year in and year out can only make it worse. What chance do they have now? Every celebrated recruit they have flamed out - let's not discount my HS batch mate, Mike Gamboa, this side of Marvin Cruz and Nestor David. Paolo Romero is the only one with an actual shot at making himself relevant, along with Kyles Lao. The Alinko Mba experiment miserably failed, and the Chris Ball mix isn't going to go somewhere else.

Predicted record: 1-13 (someone is bound to be caught on an unlucky day)