Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
Brimming with talent, University of the Philippines is not a team to be messed with beginning this coming UAAP season and for the years to come.
With the addition of prized recruits over the last couple of years, UP is primed to end its seemingly interminable Final Four drought, a position where Bo Perasol had envisioned the team would be two years ago when he was appointed head coach.
“If I talk about the vision, it’s actually happening, but the results have yet to happen because nobody can assure any championship or Final Four in basketball,” Bo Perasol said on Tuesday.
“When we started this what we really wanted is to just have a good chance of being there. Of course, people are gonna say, ‘You’re gonna win the championship.’ We want that to happen and we want to encourage our community to believe in that,” he added.
Perasol needed only one season to somehow make the UP community believe that he could turn the Fighting Maroons fortunes around after having one embarrassing year after another.
In Perasol’s first year at the helm, the Maroons finished the season in sixth place with a 5-9 record which was already a big improvement considering that the team won five games out of the possible 51 in the last four years prior to his arrival.
UP continued to make progress in Perasol’s second season with the team as it came just a game short of making the Final Four with a 6-8 mark.
With added experience, the Fighting Maroons are built to contend not only for this season but also in the years the follow.
“We built this program two years ago for the next two years which means it’s a four-year program so we’re going to have a strong team this season and the next,” he said.
“What I don’t want to happen whether I’m here or not, I want this program to continue on just like other programs where the even if some players are gone, there will be others next in line,” he added. “That’s why we wanted to get Ricci (Rivero), J-Boy (Gob) or Will (Gozum) or the young ones and then, we have to plan again how to fill those spots two years from now.”
Perasol also wants to set a high standard for UP where the short term goal is always to reach the Final Four.
“I want them (UP community) to be there, I want them to be involved just like when you talk about Ateneo and La Salle that when you talk about being in the Final Four, it’s automatic that you have to be there and I want that to happen for UP also,” he said.
The expectations are high and Perasol is embracing the challenge.
“There’s pressure but that’s excellence and that’s what UP should stand for.”