Blackwater? No thanks, Pat Aquino is busy with Gilas women gold defense
Pat Aquino—SHERWIN VARDELEON
For somebody who has modified the way in which ladies’s basketball is performed within the nation and credited to how the Philippine “cagebelles” at the moment are feared within the Southeast Asian area, Pat Aquino stays as humble as the common Juan dela Cruz.
“Is that how folks see me?” Aquino requested throughout an interview with the Inquirer final week, a day after the identify of Jeff Cariaso floated as the brand new Blackwater coach and why, after years of loyal service to the franchise, he was by no means actually given the possibility to unfold his wings.
“Thanks for that, however I see myself as a pupil of the sport, a basketball nut if you’ll,” he went on. “I simply wish to coach.”
Aquino is wishing Cariaso—or whoever the subsequent Bossing coach could be—all of the luck. He made it clear that he has resigned from his put up as assistant with the membership earlier within the 12 months earlier than turning down an precise, lengthy overdue supply to be the pinnacle coach after Ariel Vanguardia.
He now has his whole time for the Gilas Girls’s staff that may attempt to win the Southeast Asian (SEA) Video games basketball gold for the third straight version, one thing which solely Malaysia has completed earlier than.
Knack for successful
The 50-year-old College of the Philippines graduate has a knack for successful video games—and titles—in strings. He steered Nationwide U to an unprecedented six straight UAAP titles constructed on the energy of a 96-game successful streak earlier than stepping down. These two SEA Video games golds have come at a time after the Philippines had by no means gotten over the hump earlier than, and now evidently the Filipinos can not cease.
“I at all times inform myself after a win or a championship: yet one more, yet one more,” Aquino stated as he and his workers are on the ultimate days of figuring out the staff’s closing 12, which Jack Animam and Afril Bernardino will spearhead.
“There’s a whole lot of expertise within the staff, expertise keen to play for flag and nation for less than lunch cash in change,” he stated with a smile. “They know they don’t seem to be being paid that a lot, all they’ve is love of nation.”
Girls’s basketball will not be a profitable sport. Anybody can ask Bernardino.
“She simply completed her Navy coaching, which she wanted to do to develop into an enlisted personnel and earn a month-to-month wage,” Aquino, the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas’ program director for ladies’s basketball, stated.
Aquino turned down the Blackwater supply just a few days earlier than it was floated that Cariaso was being thought-about.
“I’ve my ladies (Gilas Girls), they’re my household now,” Aquino stated. INQ
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