"I’m extremely impressed with the officiating. I was told that officiating here was poor but I’ve found the complete opposite. It’s been unbiased and I’m impressed by that," said the American mentor yesterday as he made his first appearance in the weekly PSA Forum at the Holiday Inn.
Woolpert, a CBA champion coach who came in last month to replace the temperamental and at times uncontrollable Bill Bayno, however, admitted he’s no saint either, saying he’s just trying his best to get into the minds of the referees, learn their way of thinking, then simply dance to the music.
"For the last four or five years in the CBA I’ve led the league in technical fouls and ejections. I haven’t received either here in the PBA but I know I will. All I’m asking from the officials is communication. So far, the line is open. They’ve been great," he added.
Reminded of Bayno’s short but rocky stint in the PBA which had the former UNLV coach drawing a record fine of P200,000 for a single incident, Woolpert could only smile and look forward to a season free of any added distractions — on and off the court.
"All I can say is that Bill must have been some kind of crazy," he joked. "But I’m still in a learning process with these officials — learning their names, their styles, learning who and what you can yell at and for, who will communicate more, who you can get on with and who you must lay off."
Woolpert, who has guided the Phone Pals to four victories in seven starts, said there’s no such thing as a perfectly coached, perfectly played and a perfectly officiated basketball game, and that coaches, players and referees are all bound to make mistakes.
"If the referees make a poor call, like in our lost game to San Miguel in overtime where they nullified Asi Taulava’s basket that could have won us the game (in regulation), you don’t dwell on that. You’ve got to move forward and that’s what we did. We won a big game (against Alaska) the next time out."
Woolpert and his Phone Pals are currently stacked in the middle of the standings of the season-ending All-Filipino Cup, but could have been right on top of it – unbeaten in fact – considering that they lost games to Sta. Lucia, Shell and San Miguel by three points each.
"We shot 7-of-18 from the free throws in our first loss. The next one, we were a point down and Asi Taulava missed a shot he could have made 99 out of a hundred times. He could have put us up by one with less than 10 seconds left. Then the last one, we had two players missing free throws in the last minute, one being Bong Alvarez who missed two that would have possibly won the game," he said.