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After a Final Four stint last year, things are simply
looking brighter for Mapua Cardinals team hoping to win its first
National College Athletics Association (NCAA) basketball crown since
the Benny Cheng era of 1991.
Second year head coach Leo Isaac
admitted that his team has the right tools to have a chance for a
crack at the NCAA title but this will depend on their performance as
the season progresses.
“Though my team is ranked by
other coaches as among the top four teams in the NCAA, this does not
mean eh kami na ang favorites,” Isaac told The Manila Times. “We
still need to do a lot of fine-tuning para magkaroon kami ng chance
makapasok sa Final Four and then maybe sa Finals,” he said.
In order to toughen his team for
the coming NCAA wars, Mapua competed at the recent 2008 Nike Summer
League and the Fil-Oil basketball tournament where they managed to
enter the quarterfinals stages of both tournaments.
He said by entering the two
tournaments, he was able to assess on what aspect of the game they
needed to improve more in order to be more competitive.
When asked what his team’s
advantage going to the season, Isaac said it’s basically “having
the opportunity to prepare more for the tournament.”
“Sa tingin ko mas prepared kami
ngayon compared from last season. Magiging advantage namin yan,”
he said.
With veteran players Sean Co and
bigman Jerby del Rosario already gone, 2007 NCAA Most Valuable
Player Kelvin de la Peña is expected to carry much of the scoring
load for his team.
De la Peña, a native of Alberta,
Canada and now residing in Manila averaged 15.8 points, 8.6
rebounds, 5.8 assists and 2.2 steals, in last year’s NCAA
campaign.
He is again expected to lead the
Cardinals in both offense and defense with a number of veteran
players backing him up, including Neil Anthony Pascual (9.6 points,
7.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.3 blocks) and sophomore guard
Jonathan Banal (9.7 points, 1.8 rebounds and 3.2 assists).
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