UV CESAFI 2018/AUG.21,2018:UV Seniors CESAFI 2018.(CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON)
THE TWO-TIME defending champions University of the Visayas (UV) Green Lancers may be standing just a win away from returning to the Cesafi men’s basketball finals, but the journey to get to where they are right now has been longer than most people know.
According to head coach Gary Cortes, he had to take a long, hard look at his team after it started the season with two straight losses.
He then found out that injuries to key players, including ace guard Sheldon Gahi and foreign student-athlete Lassina Coulibally, got them off on the wrong foot.
“We had to troubleshoot what the root cause to the bad start was. We found out that it started with injuries and then, some players didn’t really adjust well to their roles as backups to those injured players. The worst part was some players were still looking for those players who were unavailable,” shared Cortes.
He added that he started resolving the problem by immersing the players in community outreach programs and a beach outing where they prepared the food they ate together.
“We started filling the gap and then winning came at the right time,” said Cortes of the Green Lancers’ recent successes that saw them sweep all their games in the second round of eliminations, including a huge blowout of rival squad University of Cebu (UC), which they will tangle with in the semifinals on Saturday.
UV needs only to win once in order to advance to the best-of-three finals.
“We’re really preparing for UC, doing more on mental conditioning. We know very well that UC will never give up easily and they have been in that very same position before, beating USJ-R twice last year. That’s why we need to play hard for us to be in the Cesafi finals once again,” Cortes said.