Caida Tile Masters. Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
Caida Tile boasts of the most talented team on paper in the 2016 PBA D-League Aspirants’ Cup.
Despite that, Coach Caloy Garcia has kept on reminding his wards that talent alone does not win championships.
“It doesn’t matter how strong your depth is, it is how your team will play as a team, not as individuals,” he said.
Banking on the stewardship of premier point guard Jiovani Jalalon, top rookie pick Jason Perkins, and slasher Jonathan Grey, the Tile Masters have emerged as one of the contenders in this first conference with a 4-1 card so far.
However, Garcia knows that there are still things the team needs to work on.
“I think the entry of (Philip) Paniamogan gave us a shooter we needed kasi after Janus Lozada and Roider Cabrera, we needed other guys who can be effective in the zone,” he said.
Garcia is also happy with the way Perkins, Dexter Maiquez, and Ford Ruaya have held their own down low.
But the biggest issue the Rain or Shine deputy is trying to address with Caida is the team’s cohesiveness, saying the team still needs to “learn how to play with each other” especially with the bevy of scorers in the team.
“Yun ang kulang, yung jelling. There are certain players who played here in the D-League before, but there are players like (Rey) Nambatac, Paniamogan, Grey, all of them are scorers so they must learn how to give up the ball.”
That’s why the Tile Masters really got hit hard when CafeFrance crawled back from 24-points down and stunned them, 90-87, last February 11 in what was touted as a potential Finals preview.
“That was the thing we addressed with the players after the game, that we have to play hard from jumpball up to the final buzzer,” said Garcia, as Caida quickly atoned for that loss with an 81-57 rout of Phoenix-FEU on Monday.
“We’re going to play hard for 40 minutes. That’s the message we tried to send to our players.”