Jorge Gallent may be the new head coach of San Miguel Beer but he assured that there will be no drastic changes to the system that has won them nine championships in the past few years.
Gallant said he is just tweaking some minor details to the SMB’s playbook which was anchored around the dominant presence inside the paint of current MVP frontrunner June Mar Fajardo along with the team’s array of outside gunners.
“As I told them, we just have to fix minor things, nothing major. The things that we were doing the past few games. We just fixed it a little, which is doing good,” said Gallent in the aftermath of SMB’s rousing 114-93 victory over Phoenix.
Indeed, everything seemed to be pretty well and fine in SMB’s camp even after the departure of Austria as the Beermen quickly raced to a 20-8 start in the contest and the lead eventually ballooned to its largest at 33, 62-29 just minutes away from the halftime buzzer.
SMB, though, still showed the tendency to relax when up by large margins after Phoenix cut the lead down to just 10 in the fourth quarter – a recurring habit for the Beermen even during the reins of Austria. It is actually one of the things Gallent hopes to address as the season-ending conference goes on.
“We just can’t relax. As I told them, we have to play 48 minutes. If we tend to relax we are giving the opponent chances to come back. We just have to play hard whether you are coming off the bench you have to give that energy when inside the court,” explained the veteran coach.
“This team is very composed once the lead goes up with 30 and then down to 10, I’m very confident that they can survive that,” Gallent added as big triples from Marcio Lassiter, Simon Enciso and CJ Perez restored order in the end game and save him some blushes.
Gallent also admitted that the coaching job was really a big shoes to fill in especially with the success of coach Leo Austria with the Beermen but he’s nonetheless confident that they can pull through it with the help of the management as well.
“I’m just very lucky that Boss Al (Chua), Boss RSA (Ramon S. Ang) and boss Robert (Non) gave me this opportunity to coach a great organization so I’m very happy. Pressured? yes but the management is always there to support us so there’s nothing to worry about,” he added.
