Cellar dwellers no more
Before someone strikes that awful chord by saying the UP Fighting Maroons basketball team is aiming for new records of futility with three bridesmaid finishes in the past five seasons of the UAAP, most of the Diliman faithful still remember the teams of about a decade ago when UP notched a perfect record – zero wins and 14 losses. Statisticians point out that in a span of nine seasons from 2007 to 2015, the Maroons racked up an unenviable 13 wins and 113 losses, a win less than the team’s overall record this year alone which still fell a few points short of the championship.
Consuelo de bobo for the Iskolar ng Bayan, but there was a time when Diliman held a bonfire after the Maroons won their first game in two years. A solitary win to end a run of more than 20 losses overlapping three seasons surely felt like a championship, a direct contrast to the lone loss against eventual champions De La Salle University on Dec. 6 with all the marbles on the line that felt like the whole world crashing in the Big One, epicenter Sunken Garden.
Maybe it takes a while to wean oneself away from a culture of losing, or UP being UP is just not used to being the top seed, top dog doesn’t become us having gotten used to being bottom dog. Time was when we used to watch the Maroons build modest leads in the early quarters, then slowly and painfully unravel as the game wore on and fall behind by points insurmountable, indirectly proportional to numbers on the game clock. Or has that storyline ever really changed?
Well, it’s up to coach Gold and operations man Bo and the rest of the guys to pick themselves and the whole community up for Season 87, and as they say “give back” to the faithful who, back in the day, watched the games in far off Rizal Memorial as part of PE requirements. Hoarse voiced mommy herding us greenhorns outside the women’s swimming pool beside the former gymnasium that resembled a giant handbag that could perhaps be picked up by a stray alien hand from the sky, for the long ride across town in a big bus.
The hand dealt us during the first year of PE requirement to watch UAAP was a good one – after six straight losses to start the season, the Maroons won their last
