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After 5 years, two teaching modifications, and 36 losses, the UST Growling Tigers are lastly again within the UAAP Ultimate 4
MANILA, Philippines – In 2019, the UST Growling Tigers loved the view close to the highest of the UAAP males’s basketball world.
Following a Season 82 runner-up end to the dynastic Ateneo Blue Eagles, the loaded Tigers have been hungry for extra, for one more crack at ending a title drought extending since 2006.
Whereas the life-changing pandemic just a few months later derailed each group’s plans and doused their fireplace, former UST coach Aldin Ayo nonetheless flew too near the solar and carried out a secret Sorsogon coaching bubble on the peak of strict lockdowns and different well being protocols.
It set off a large chain response of occasions that obtained him banned from the UAAP and triggered a mass exodus of gamers, most of whom turned champions on different groups like UP’s CJ Cansino, and Letran’s Rhenz Abando and Brent Paraiso.
5 lengthy years handed, and after three struggling seasons, two teaching modifications, and 36 losses, the Tigers are lastly again within the Ultimate 4, settling in because the third seed with a 7-7 report and locking up a semifinal conflict in opposition to the group it beat twice in a row for the finals again in 2019: the UP Combating Maroons.
Whereas seven wins in opposition to the identical variety of losses doesn’t look that spectacular on paper, they have been greater than UST’s mixed win whole in these three shedding seasons, and that truth in itself is a testomony to how low this system sank, and the way excessive it rose again up in a 12 months’s span.
Repaying belief, rolling the cube
Many might level to the arrival of 2006 champion head coach Pido Jarencio as the important thing in rediscovering the Tigers’ profitable methods, however as Jarencio himself would repeatedly level out, all credit score goes to his different coaches and key gamers, particularly Nic Cabañero, Mo Tounkara, and Forthsky Padrigao.
As gamers got here and went amid stirring tides, doubts, and vanquished desires, it was Cabañero who stayed agency, enduring every a type of 36 losses earlier than his efforts are lastly set to be repaid this season with not solely a Ultimate 4 berth, however a breakthrough Legendary 5 honor.
Tounkara, in the meantime, was a late roll of the cube as UST took lengthy, exhausting seems to be at him and Peter Osang, earlier than group administration hit the jackpot on a lanky, sweet-shooting huge man set to complete within the prime 10 of the MVP race.
Final however not the least, Padrigao’s arrival, with many raised eyebrows as well, arguably accomplished the UST puzzle, because the Tigers took one other probability in a controversial determine with an MVP-caliber recreation, and got here away as winners anew.
The place to, UST?
So, right here it’s, the latest iteration of the UST Growling Tigers, a group standing at a crossroads with an excellent mixture of veterans and new weapons carrying a 7-7 report — neither a real winner nor loser.
Come Saturday, November 30, they take the subsequent step. Whether or not they take a leap ahead or one again, they’ve already defeated their previous woes — escaping one other bubble, if you’ll. – Rappler.com
