Photo by Jan Dizon, NCAA.

The big story coming out of the PBA last week were the major changes on the San Miguel bench, involving assistant coach Ato Agustin and head coach Siot Tanquingcen. Agustin, who was brought in earlier this conference to be part of the brain trust, assumed coaching duties during the Beermen’s loss to the Coca-Cola Tigers, while Tanquinqcen sat meekly at the sidelines.

After the game, San Miguel basketball operations head Robert Non said that the move was “on-the-job training” for Agustin, who led the San Sebastian Stags to last year’s NCAA championship as a first-time coach. San Sebastian management consequently released a statement saying that Agustin would still remain the Stags’ head coach. Curiously, Eric Gascon, a former teammate of Agustin with the MBA’s Pampanga Dragons, joined the San Sebastian coaching staff, and rumors are that he is the Stags’ coach-in-waiting.

The San Miguel coaching situation is awkward, to say the least, with Tanquingcen playing the good soldier amidst the humiliating circumstances, while Agustin has to cram to get up to speed with how to handle the team – reports have it that he has also been running the team’s practices – at a critical juncture in the conference, when the Beermen are fighting for an all-important second seeding, which would guarantee the team a free ride to the semifinals.

Speculation is predictably rife about what’s going to happen with San Miguel. Everyone is assuming that Agustin will be the next coach of the team, and this has given rise to whispers that the whole Tanquingcen-Agustin charade is a way to circumvent the rules of both the PBA and the NCAA; both leagues currently disallow head coaches from the other to handle a team. The rumors have even spilled over to the camp of San Miguel’s sister team Ginebra, where Tanquingcen is speculated to end up after the conference, either as a deputy to his mentor Jong Uichico, or as the latter’s replacement.

For most level-headed, clear-thinking fans, however, there is one big question: What the fuck is San Miguel management thinking? It’s hard to make any sense of this move, especially its timing at such a critical juncture, and so near the end of the season.

It’s terribly unfair to Tanquingcen, who, for all his shortcomings as a coach, does not deserve this kind of public humiliation. It’s not the first time it’s happened, either; in 2006, he was demoted back to become Uichico’s assistant at Ginebra despite winning two titles with the team, where he was the architect of the Gin Kings’ Fast and Furious attack featuring Jayjay Helterbrand and Mark Caguioa.

It’s certainly not an ideal situation either for Agustin, who has spent the last several months preparing to coach San Sebastian for its title defense. Instead, he now has to juggle two jobs and deal with all the shit that this situation is bringing up.

And while I’m sure he’s happy to have the job, Agustin’s San Miguel homecoming, at the very least, should have happened under better circumstances. He was always San Miguel’s forgotten superstar, carrying the team on his shoulders when more celebrated teammates like Samboy Lim and Hector Calma were decimated by injuries. While Lim, Calma, and another star teammate, Allan Caidic, stopped playing, they were given cushy roles in San Miguel’s PBA operations, something that didn’t happen for guys like Agustin and Alvin Teng, players who were just as responsible for San Miguel’s PBA success in the ‘90s. Of course, unlike Lim, Caidic, and Calma, they never played for Ron Jacobs, weren’t close to Danding Cojuangco, and never played for the celebrated Northern Consolidated national team.

Even Agustin’s return to the San Miguel bench was something he had to earn, with his glowing coaching resume, after leading San Sebastian not just to an NCAA title, but other tournaments as well. So yeah, he deserves better.

As it is, there’s no reason why all these coaching moves couldn’t have waited until the offseason, when Agustin would be free of his San Sebastian commitments, he’ll have a hand in building up the team’s roster, and he’ll have ample time to install his system. Instead, he has to deal with this clusterfuck for all of us to see.

Then again, should it come as any surprise that San Miguel’s coaching change should come about in such a ham-fisted manner? It’s the same way it does in building up its team, acquiring talent haphazardly without regard for things like chemistry or balance, something that already drives its fans crazy. Then again, as a fan of another team, maybe I should just shut up. After all, it’s better for my team if San Miguel just keeps running around like a headless chicken.

The worst moment of my basketball fandom came in September 1994, in an NCAA championship game at the oven-hot Rizal Memorial Coliseum. I was in sixth grade then, and I was with my classmates rooting for the Letran Knights, who were defending their championship against their arch-enemy San Sebastian Stags. We went there expecting to win like we did the year before, but Baste started to pull away late in the 4th quarter behind the exploits of their high-flying swingmen, (the overage) Jesse Bardaje and Rodney Santos.

Watching your team lose was bad enough, but it was what happened after that really made it bad. With the game out of reach, the San Sebastian crowd decided to collectively, sarcastically, start rooting for Letran. Those fuckers just wanted to rub it in, so they started chanting “Go, Letran! Go, go Letran!” and cheering whenever the Knights made a meaningless basket.

It was just absolute, utter pwnage, and the worst thing was that we couldn’t do anything about it. When the Baste gallery started up their trademark “Poging Baste...” song (the single greatest pep song in the world), the Letran crowd couldn’t even muster up enough energy for our Palibhasa Letran. Over the years, I’ve developed a grudging admiration for that old Baste crowd, the baddest enemy crowd I’d ever faced.

I don’t know if there was a similar scene during San Sebastian’s clinching victory over defending champions San Beda last Saturday, but Baste’s pwnage of the rest of the league this season certainly merited sarcastic cheers from their gallery. Except for a funk late in the eliminations and the first game of their final four playoff series, the Stags have been pretty fucking awesome this season.

Frankly, I’m still confounded by the Stags’ championship run. It wasn’t that they won, it was how they won. Cinderella’s have gone all the way in Philippine college basketball before, most recently in 2006 when Pido Jarencio’s UST upset Ateneo. In that season, the Growling Tigers caught fire at the end of the eliminations and rode the hot hands of Jojo Duncil in the finals; they lurked all season long and snared their prey during crunch time.

San Sebastian did nothing of the sort; they dominated the summer leagues, and then they won their first fifteen regular season games in very impressive fashion. Even when they swooned, the players on the court always carried themselves like their losing was a mere aberration. In both games wherein the Red Lions beat them this season, the matches came down to the final possession.

I’m still curious about the Stags, and I don’t know quite what to make of them. I’m looking forward to seeing them next season, with a reasonably intact lineup (their only key loss will be main man Jimbo Aquino, who served out his fifth year). We’ll see if Ato Agustin’s magic works the second time around.

I am as interested about Aquino’s future prospects as a professional basketball player. Will he be Bardaje, the college cult hero who never made it in the big leagues, or will he be Santos, the longtime PBA veteran who’s had a solid run as a vital part of numerous championship teams?

In 1993, the powerhouse defending champions San Miguel faced perennial All-Filipino contenders Coney Island (nee Purefoods) in the finals of that year’s homegrown-only tournament. The Beermen were heavy favorites after making a trade for Allan Caidic in the offseason, reuniting the Triggerman with his former national team buddies, Samboy Lim and Hector Calma. The star-studded San Miguel backcourt was rounded out by the reigning Most Valuable Player in the league, Ato Agustin. The two teams’ matchup was a repeat of the previous year’s finals, a series that was capped by 32 points from Agustin in the deciding seventh game.

Rookie coach Chot Reyes was at the helm of Coney Island, which was making its sixth straight All-Filipino appearance. Everyone knew about the frontcourt of Alvin Patrimonio and Jerry Codinera, but their backcourt wasn’t too shabby either, with Glenn Capacio, Boy Cabahug, and Dindo Pumaren. Curiously, Reyes acquired an eclectic mix of players in the offseason; rookies Dwight Lago, Benny Cheng, Olsen Racela, and Freddie Abuda were drafted to provide hustle and energy, but Reyes also recruited a couple of grizzled veterans: Caidic’s old enforcer from Presto, Abe King, and a rugged guard from Alaska, Frankie Lim.

Lim had been, for many years, the starting point guard for Alaska, but he was let go in the offseason as Tim Cone and the Alaska brain trust decided to overhaul their team’s style and build around rookie point guard Johnny Abarrientos—an amazingly prescient move. Reyes, a longtime Alaska assistant, got Lim to join him with the Purefoods franchise. The veteran guard was there to provide insurance for Pumaren, knock down open three-pointers to take the pressure off his twin towers, and provide the kind of tough, old-school defense on opposing combo guards such as, yep, Ato Agustin.

Coney Island won that battle in 1993, but San Miguel got back at them in the tournament’s 1994 edition. Now, 15 years later, Ato Agustin and Frankie Lim are back facing off against each other in a championship series. Instead of duking it out on the court, Lim’s defending champions San Beda Red Lions are trying to hold off Agustin’s surprising San Sebastian Stags.

NCAA sportscaster Toff Rada, who has watched both teams closely, has some of the best analyses of the protagonists. He details the key weakness of the Stags’ game:

The San Sebastian Stags have been through a historic run in Season 85, with their 15-game winning streak spanning a stretch of almost 3 months. That streak was finally snapped by the Letran Knights of Louie Alas during their second round meeting, and things have been in free fall for the Stags, managing just a 2-3 win loss record, since then.

Much of the credit had been given to the physical play employed by the Knights, as the key to solving the San Sebastian puzzle. However, it is no coincidence that the Knights also utilize what may be the meanest full-court press in the league. I believe the press, more than the physicality, exposed the chink in the Stags' armor: the point guard position.

The coaching battle between the old hardcourt warriors is just as interesting. Ato Agustin has emerged as a surprise coaching maven, despite having had no prior high-level coaching experience. Meanwhile, Frankie Lim still has doubters even though he has led his team to two championships. This series, however, figures to be his biggest challenge yet.

Photo by Jan Dizon, NCAA.

I did not see this coming at all. Neither did you, and if you say you did, you’re lying.

I’m not talking about Ato Agustin’s thinning hairline, or the disappearance of his killer stache, although those are weird too. I’m talking about the Ato Agustin taking over the coaching reins of the San Sebastian Stags and turning them into the best team in Philippine college basketball, highlighted by their sweep of the first round of the NCAA capped by a victory over arch-rival Letran.

It’s really weird. He preaches tough defense and unselfishness – and his team buys it! Apparently, they’ve never seen a tape of him playing, ever. I mean, I watched Ato Agustin carry those hobbled San Miguel teams in the early ‘90s, and I loved it when he led the Pampanga Dragons to the first MBA national title over the Negros Slashers, but he’s really not the guy who has the most credibility when he implores his players to play unselfishly and make the extra pass, is he?

His sideline demeanor is also kind of a surprise. He doesn’t subscribe to the mura philosophy of his former coaches (and fellow Kapampangans) Aric del Rosario and Yeng Guiao, although he gives out instructions in the huddle in English (with a heavy Kapampangan hint) like Guiao.

This time last year, I was taking a long break from work, and I had the opportunity to watch more NCAA games than perhaps anyone not paid to watch them. Agustin took over for a San Sebastian team that lost their best player, 6’7” center Jason Ballesteros, and was left with spare parts. So how did he end up, less than a year later with this juggernaut?

Well, there’s the defense. They play hard all the time, and their pressure defense (actually, a 1-2-2 backcourt trap) is absolutely suffocating. I was surprised at how good their press is; it’s better than the presses by teams like De La Salle and Letran, whose programs have been running pressure defensive schemes for years.

But more importantly, they are playing with swagger, something that Agustin had in no short supply all throughout his career. They were never rattled even when Letran went on a huge run and led by double-figures, or when Rey Guevarra and Kevin Alas made several impossible shots off daredevil drives, or when Letran gunner Jaypee Belencion hit a bunch of three-pointers.

They always knew they could come back, and they did, erasing the Letran lead in a huge third quarter run. It was a great performance that could only come from a crew who truly, honestly believe that they’re better than the other team.

Letran was able to limit the Stags’ main man Jimbo Aquino, but Ronald Pascual stepped up in his stead. But I suspect that if it hadn’t been Aquino or Pascual, it would have been someone else for the Stags. The team’s just built that way, and Agustin deserves all the credit in the world for that.