Heavy Bombers giving good account in NCAA 95

MANILA, Philippines — Siting at an unlikely sixth place in the ongoing Season 95 NCAA men's basketball tournament are the Jose Rizal University Heavy Bombers.

The Louie Gonzalez-mentored squad totes a 2-3 record. While such record may seem pedestrian, if you look at where the team is coming from, it’s not bad (they finished the Filoil Flying V Preseason Cup with a 1-6 record).

Granted the two teams they defeated are at the bottom of the standings (University of Perpetual Help System Dalta Altas and Arellano University Chiefs), if you compare the two squads, the latter two have more or less, veteran line-ups.

JRU took down in succession Arellano, 80-77, and UPHSD, 71-66.

The three constants in the two were the players who didn’t shine much during the preseason — John Amores, Stefan Steinl and Agem Miranda.

Okay. Maybe Miranda did lead the team in scoring in the preseason with 11 points per game and he is the only one in double figures in this young NCAA season with 13.0 points an outing. But a lot of the buzz went to John delos Santos, MJ dela Virgen, and Darius Estrella. 

The latter is out due to a knee injury that sidelined him even before the season began. The latter two are struggling with defenses keying onto them.

I’d say that a huge part of those wins were from the contributions of Amores and Steinl.

In those two wins, Amores averaged 13.0 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists while Steinl also averaged 13.0 points. It is his board work, 7.0 rebounds in those wins, that have also helped. He has also shot 60% from the field giving the Heavy Bombers some muscle inside.

Steinl has been impressive. This past summer including the last year, he was seen as a thug, often instigating fights on court. One time, one team even planned on taking a nasty shot at him, but then head coach Vergel Meneses yanked him out of that preseason game before anything got out of hand. At the end of that game, none of the players of the opposing team wanted to shake hands with Steinl. He wasn’t even lined up for the NCAA Season 94 roster.

This past summer, he still didn’t do much. He mostly sat. Thankfully, he did nothing to start World War III all over again. Instead, this season, he is letting his game do the talking.

A 2-3 record isn’t much to crow about but if you consider that JRU just had a coaching change, lost two key players in Estrella and Jed Mendoza (who is now with UE), and that they have a young team, it isn’t so bad. 

And Gonzalez is showing what he can do with a superstar-laden or huge moneyed program like he had in his last stop in La Salle.

They are building for the future.