End of the road for Alaska

Growing pains for Tenorio and young Aces

Following last night's 97-100 defeat to the Philippine Cup leading Talk 'n' Text Tropang Texters, it's definitely back to the drawing board for coach Joel Banal and his Aces.

This conference, the Aces found themselves doing a little too much too soon. Yes, they kept the Triangle Offense as earlier promised by coach Banal, but they also incorporated a more concerned approach to the low post (which is probably another intricacy of the Triangle but not the norm since we usually see it being set up via the high post).

You can't really fault coach Banal for this, since he has two of the best young post players in cornerstone Sonny Thoss and the emerging JayR Reyes. Quite frankly, you won't find a better post player than Reyes (when he's focused) other than veterans Danny Ildefonso and Kerby Raymundo. While you'd be hard-pressed to find someone near the rebounding and boxing out skills of Thoss with the same size and strength (no, Joe DeVance surely doesn't count and we're still waiting on Rob Reyes).

The problem this coach potato fan blogger sees other than the "too much, too soon" bit are injuries to star L.A. Tenorio, the sudden dip in Cyrus Baguio's performance (he had nice games such as yesterday's, but all in all was very inconsistent), and finally, a sudden lack of depth-- which shouldn't have been the case.

Truth be told, the Aces had a boat load of untested guys waiting their turn on the bench. Since the whole Philippine Cup campaign looked more like a try-out/ practice to build familiarity and cohesion, it's a wonder why they didn't send in their other guys and experimented with the rotation some more.

For one, Eric Salamat could've slid to the PG spot to spell Tenorio. We're not saying that Salamat is a PBA-caliber starting PG, but surely he has enough handles, IQ and moxy to not make a fool of himself out there.

Also, a Tenorio-Tony de la Cruz-Mac Baracael-Reyes-Thoss line-up would've been very intriguing to say the least. Yes, TDLC doesn't have the footspeed to slash into the paint, but then the Aces could've played Euro-style and opened the floor a lot more for their bigs with Tenorio and TDLC sniping from outside.

Defense? TDLC, Baracael and Thoss has that covered.

The silver lining out of the Aces' failed Philippine Cup campaign is that they now have a conference under their young belts and, given the roster, there's no other way else to go but up.