Nash Racela takes over TNT coaching chores, replaces Uichico

Coach Nash Racela. INQUIRER FILE / TRISTAN TAMAYO

Racela, the champion UAAP coach with Far Eastern, will be named the new head coach of PBA powerhouse TNT KaTropa within the next few days, as learned by the Inquirer from very reliable sources.

Nash, brother of former PBA All-Star point guard Olsen, has been serving as an assistant to several coaches of the Texters since the last decade and will get his biggest break as he takes over Jong Uichico.

READ: ‘I never wanted to be a coach,’ recalls Nash Racela | Racela: Jose capable of producing big numbers every game

The announcement of his appointment is expected to be made by TNT management within the next few days, but the Inquirer got wind of the development from unimpeachable sources as management cuts Uichico’s control of TNT after two years at the helm.

Uichico was appointed coach of the Texters at the start of the 2014 Season, when the Manny V. Pangilinan group reshuffled coaches in its three teams, which had Norman Black going to Meralco from TNT.

This will be the second major coaching change in the MVP-controlled group of PBA teams following the appointment of Yeng Guiao as new mentor of NLEX, which the Inquirer was also the first to break two weeks ago.

Racela won a title with the Tamaraws when they beat the Santo Tomas Growling Tigers in Game 3 of the UAAP Finals in Season 78, his third year at the helm of Far Eastern.

Racela will be inheriting a team that will now be built around Asia’s top point guard Jason Castro and  former National University standout and Gilas Pilipinas member Troy Rosario, the forward who helped deny Racela and the Tamaraws a title in the UAAP a year before they finally won the big one.

Uichico, meanwhile, failed to steer the Texters to a championship in the PBA Season about to end, with the Texters’ biggest disappointment coming in the on-going Governors’ Cup where they finished as the top seed but got booted out by Meralco in four games in the Final Four.

READ: Racela says stalking players online ‘helps me as a coach’

A winner of nine total PBA championships counting eight with rival conglomerate San Miguel Corp., Uichico transferred to the MVP Group after a falling out in 2012 with Barangay Ginebra, joining the staff of Gilas Pilipinas first before moving in as an assistant to Ryan Gregorio at Meralco.

The 54-year-old Uichico’s last championship came in 2015, when he steered the Texters a classic double-overtime victory over Rain or Shine in the Commissioner’s Cup Finals. CBB