By REYNALD MAGALLON
Converge may have ended the year on a hot streak but coach Franco Atienza is refusing to be carried away as he preaches for continuous improvements and learning for his young squad.
The FiberXers are heading into the new year, joining the Rain or Shine Elasto Painters as the hottest teams in the league with four straight victories – enough for the charges of Atienza to seize the fourth spot of the standings with a 6-2 record.
“Sa amin we are taking it each game at a time. However cliche talaga namang you’re only as good as your last game,” said Atienza after adding Meralco to its growing list of victims that also included Barangay Ginebra, NLEX and Magnolia.
“You might argue na we are on a winning streak but yun lang naman yung kaya namin gawin – to put ourselves in a position na somehow at the end of the elimination medyo maganda yung placing namin,” he added.
During that four-game winning run, the FiberXers unleashed their new weapons in Jordan Heading and Justine Baltazar.
From the looks of it, Baltazar is slowly but surely getting into the flow of the system. There’s also the marked improvement for guys like Alec Stockton, Schonny Winston, Bryan Santos and Justin Arana.
And doing all of that while winning and finding their identity as a team.
“We want to do that, to play as a team, run our system and defend as a team and when we do that good things happen. We want to continue learning and we believe yung ceiling namin for improvement medyo malaki pa so we want to continue to improve,” Atienza said of the team’s potential.
As much as the team is hitting its stride so far in the Commissioner’s Cup, it’s not a secret to Atienza that they will also have bigger targets on their backs and other teams will take them more seriously from here on.
But he assured the young crew will be ready and will embrace the challenges.
“We know as we are doing this medyo lumalaki yung mga target sa likod namin magagaling yung mga coaches dito all the other 12 teams have smart, high IQ players and coaches,” said Atienza.
“I’m sure ngayon palang mga makakalaban namin will be ready and we will be tested. We will be ready for that yun naman ang essence ng competition. We want to
