Blackwater head coach Ariel Vanguardia is choosing to look at a glass half full rather than half empty when it comes to the Bossing's sudden slump that cost them the spot in the best-of-three quarterfinals and falling into the eighth seed against a twice-to-beat San Miguel.
After a dream run where the team had its best start in the all-Filipino conference with a 5-1 record, the Bossing suddenly found themselves in a middle of a five-game losing spell to finish with a 5-6 slate in the eliminations.
“We've been hit bad pero ang maganda nito at least nasa purgatoryo pa kami, may pag asa pa,'' said Vanguardia after his team wrapped up the eliminations with another loss, a 75-66 decision at the hands of Magnolia.
“I'm still hoping na di pa namamatay yung pag asa we're gonna focus now on San Miguel. Today we weren't able to sustain yung maganda naming depensa sa first half kasi di rin kami nakashoot sa second half,” he added.
It also didn’t help that injuries also struck in the worst time for the Bossing as Joshua Torralba and Yousef Taha were already out of the playoffs. Taha sustained a fractured hand while Torralba suffered from a quadriceps contusion.
Nonetheless, Vanguardia is looking at the silver lining in their performance in the eliminations – a huge improvement from their 1-10 record last conference which was a part of their infamous 29-game losing streak.
“It's a totally different team from the last conference team. You have to take the good and the bad sinasabi nila, you have to trust the process,” said Vanguardia.
“Right now we're in the process, at least we are a playoff team now and we got to sustain that. Our goal was to reach top 6 but we failed but looking at it we still have to beat a team twice, ganun din naman kung best-of-three,” he added
“Still looking at it half full rather than half empty. Still positive sabi ko nga sa kanila we’re still four games better than the last conference. We're in the playoffs, we're not dead but we got to put our acts together against San Miguel.”