Despite struggles, Guiao optimistic NLEX can come back

NLEX head coach Yeng Guiao. Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

NLEX coach Yeng Guiao put it plain and simple when he talked about the team’s three-game slump in the 2017 PBA Philippine Cup.

Guiao knows what exactly what his Road Warriors are doing wrong following the Road Warriors’ 96-85 loss to Blackwater on Wednesday.

“We’re obviously struggling. We have no excuses,” he said. “The teams that beat us are just playing better than we are. We have not been defending well the past three games, and our problem has been basically defense.”

Guiao absolved his boys of the notion that the losses are due to complete lack of effort, saying he can see the team doing its best to cover all fronts.

“It’s not much of the effort. I can see the guys really trying hard. It’s the mental aspect, the lapses that we have, just bad decision making sometimes,” he said. “I can see that the effort is there, the guys are really trying hard, but probably in anything that’s new, there will be some adjustments. But I don’t want to make use of that as an excuse because some other teams also have new systems, they have new coaches, they have new players, but they’re not struggling as much as we are. So we just have to take on the responsibility that we’re just too slow learning the system.”

Frustrations are evident on heels of this third straight loss, and Guiao knows it from the belief that NLEX is better than its 1-3 record suggests.

“We’re only frustrated because we know that this team has potential. We played very well in the offseason. We are practicing really well, and if you see this team in practice, it doesn’t look like we’re losing. But all teams are good in practice. The real test is in the game. For now we are failing that test, and we should go back and work harder,” he said.

Despite their record, Guiao remains positive that his team can turn it around.

“I’m still very optimistic,” he said. “Although we are now just trying to win one game at a time and survive, I feel that at the right point, we can come back. I think it’s still manageable.”