Intact Tigers ready to growl in the season

MANILA, Philippines - True to his characteristic jovial self, University of Santo Tomas coach Pido Jarencio cracked a joke about how, in his view, the Tigers rank among the teams vying for glory in the UAAP Season 75.

“Of course the defending champion Ateneo is number one, you can’t take away their winning tradition. Number two is National U, three La Salle, four is a tossup, it might be FEU, UP, UE or Adamson. And where would that leave us? At the bottom. Isn’t eight a lucky number in Chinese?” Jarencio said in Filipino, drawing laughter.

He shrugged off his peers’ bright assessment about his troops, who will basically remain intact from last year’s semis campaign, reuniting with comebacking Clark Bautista, Aljon Mariano, Kenneth Mamaril and Eduardo Daquioag from 2010.

“They’re always saying we’re strong. We’re not strong, we only have an excellent new school gym,” he said in jest. 

Being intact, he insisted, depends on the unit that is re-assembling.

“If you’re intact and yet the players are not good, that’s still amounts to nothing. As for us, I’m just happy that we have no problems this year, all the comebacking players met eligibility requirements, my veterans and my rookies are all improving. You be the judge of what’s in store for us this year,” he said.

Back in harness are the players instrumental in UST’s Final Four appearance in 2011: Seasoned Jeric Fortuna, Jeric Teng, and Melo Afuang, and sophomores Karim Abdul and Kevin Ferrer.

Bautista, UST’s second leading scorer with an average of 11.1 points spiked by 36 percent three-point shooting in Season 73, and Mariano, good for 7.7 markers an outing boasting of 51.9 percent markmanship from beyond the arc, are expected to boost the Tigers’ vaunted perimeter game.

The 6-6 Mamaril, meanwhile, is expected to provide the needed support to Abdul and Afuang inside the paint, along with 6-7 transferee Robert Hainga.

Last year, the Tigers gradually worked their way up to the semis after a 3-4 start, winning all but two of their second round assignments to finish at No. 4 with 8-6, a card that was double their meager output in 2010.

“Our goal is to make it to the Final Four, just like last year. We’ll go one game at a time and see how we’ll progress. We can never say, maybe we might go further than that, depending on how we’ll run,” Jarencio said.

As his usual allusion to the wild cat representing their school mascot, the UST mentor had this sort of fair warning to the rest:

“We have three rookies, four comebacking players and the rest are veterans. Go figure. Just remember that the tiger, when he’s on the ground, he’s deadly.”