Heh

Just a couple of hours after the last post, Purefoods got eliminated from the ongoing Philippine Cup after laying a big fat egg against, ironically, Air 21. It got so ugly that during a timeout midway through 4th quarter, James Yap got into a shouting match against Purefoods assistant coach Koy Banal, after Banal chewed out Yap for a missed defensive assignment. Yap then threw a towel at Banal, who had to be restrained by the other guys on the bench from going at Yap.

Yeah, it was as bad as it sounds. At that point, the team was down by something like 20 points, and Yap had been carrying the team, scoring I think 28 26 points. After that, Yap went back on the court and basically stopped playing, just jogging up and down, and the rest of the team just played dead.

Now, I never root against any of my favorite teams, and there was no excuse for what Yap did, but I hope this is the last straw against the Purefoods coaching staff. They're the worst offensive team in the league (something that shouldn't happen with Yap and Kerby Raymundo in the lineup), they don't have any offensive structure, their defensive rotations are lousy, the in-game coaching is horrible, and they never seem to execute off timeouts. The body language by the players are terrible, and everyone looks like they'd rather be someplace else.

Meanwhile, the whole coaching staff is just full of it. Head coach Ryan Gregorio is quick to make excuses, while Banal, the team's "defensive coordinator" has been ineffective all conference. In fact, it was odd that Banal started going at Yap for the missed assignment when Raymundo and Peter June Simon were missing assignments all game long, and the defensive gameplan coming into the game was just horrible.

The whole coaching staff really needs to go. Man, I hope they finally pull the trigger on it. National team coach Yeng Guiao might be available.

Meanwhile, the second conference of the PBA won't be on until March. I need to find something else to get into until then.


UPDATE: GMANews.TV reports that Yap and Banal have patched things up. Gregorio still needs to be fired though. I hope they get Yeng Guiao.

Labels: basketball, purefoods, sports

- posted by jaemark @ 12/28/2008 09:16:00 PM