La Salle’s Topex Robinson celebrated by his gamers after UAAP title. –UAAP PHOTO
It already appears trite, the way in which phrases like tradition or buy-in are tossed round by coaches as the explanations for a workforce’s success.
So when La Salle’s finest gamers discuss these phrases with out even mentioning them, you realize Topex Robinson did one thing proper.
“To start with, it feels so good [playing for Robinson]. What others describe as a participant’s coach, it was all in coach Topex,” Season 86 Most Invaluable Participant (MVP) Kevin Quiambao mentioned, admitting that someway, Robinson’s previous heartaches grew to become his personal.
“With all of the hardships that coach Topex went by way of; in Lyceum, they went to the Finals two straight occasions and misplaced. I took that to coronary heart,” he mentioned. “After which I mentioned that may’t occur once more figuring out that he’s received my again.
“I must also have his again.”
By no means giving up
Kevin Quiambao cuts the web after main La Salle to the UAAP championship in males’s basketball. –MARLO CUETO/INQUIRER.web
Quiambao had that and extra. He produced 24 factors, 9 rebounds and two blocks and likewise had one final ounce of will to hold La Salle previous the College of the Philippines (UP), 73-69, in Recreation 3 of the UAAP males’s basketball Finals late Wednesday at Good Araneta Coliseum.
The Inexperienced Archers ended a seven-year look ahead to the crown they usually did it on Robinson’s first yr as head coach.
“That is my first championship as a university head coach, after so many tries, you simply don’t wanna quit. If you doubt your self and also you don’t have the braveness to maneuver ahead, know that there’s anyone behind you,” Robinson mentioned.
The soft-spoken, but eloquent, mentor all the time preached tradition in each bench cease in his profession. At La Salle, he was no completely different. The Inexperienced Archers merely did a greater job translating these phrases into motion.
La Salle absorbed a 30-point gut-punch in its Recreation 1 encounter with the Combating Maroons, 97-67, the place Quiambao admitted to being ineffective after being restricted to 11 factors on four-for-10 capturing. He additionally simply had six rebounds.
However Robinson stored motivating his wards. “There’s no use crying over spilled milk,” he informed them. He talked Quiambao into coming off the bench, a ploy that helped the Archers forge an 82-60 series-tying Recreation 2 win.
“That first recreation loss was actually difficult for me. I kinda requested [myself] if I [should be here] teaching, however each time I see these guys, they gave me the braveness to maneuver ahead as a result of I draw my power from them,” Robinson mentioned.
‘Successful surroundings’
Other than Quiambao, Mike Phillips was additionally amongst those that credited La Salle’s emotional return to the highest of males’s varsity basketball to Robinson.
“One of many largest issues I’m proud to have [Robinson] as my coach is all of the work that he put into the surroundings that we have now within the court docket, within the locker room, in apply … that’s actually what retains us within the recreation, retains us all through the hardships,” mentioned Phillips, the third-year huge man of the Inexperienced Archers.
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“[Robinson] offers us the liberty in the whole lot we do and so he offers us the liberty in the whole lot to make errors and be taught. As a lot as we bicker, we combat, he’s all the time had our again … loads of credit score goes to teach for constructing that profitable surroundings,” he added.