“I’d rather be the best at what I do and not even be the champion as long as I know that’s my best potential,” shares rookie head coach Juno Sauler after he steered the DLSU Green Archers to the UAAP championship.
Three weeks prior to the start of the season, Sauler took over as the head coach of the DLSU Green Archers. Many doubted the fate of the team due to the abrupt change of system. Many Lasallian supporters had apprehensions. Many wondered what this new coach could bring to the Green Archers, but Sauler silenced all the skeptics as he eventually brought the crown back to La Salle four months later.
Sauler is dubbed as one of the best minds in the game to date. The usually stoic and straightforward Sauler proved that on top of shooting and defensive skills, basketball is a game of strategy, and that is what he does best. Silent waters run deep, as the cliche goes. He may be a rookie coach, but he has the mind of a veteran with a creme de la creme of basketball intelligence. Sauler was exactly what the team needed. He molded the young La Salle team into a championship caliber squad.
Strict policies
On his first day as the new head coach, Sauler ordered his lads to a twice-a-day training session and required all of them to stay at the dorm. He was firm on instilling on and off-court discipline among the players.
Sauler laid his cards as a coach coming into the season and it started from there. The Green Archers were immersed in a new system that would eventually see them clinch the championship after a five-year drought. The Green Archers got themselves immersed into the Sauler system and bought into it.
His system is characterized by a keen focus on setting your mindset for every ballgame. Improving in each and every game is what always matters for Sauler and it is with no doubt that such mindset helped the Green-and-White get back to the top of the UAAP.
“It has been a season of constant improvement. Even for next year that will be our focus,” says La Salle’s champion coach. As the Green Archers had Sauler’s mindset implanted and programmed into their own ways of thinking, effective ball rotation and shot selection saw teamwork pulling the team together. Constant emphasis on improvement saw the team improve their overall free throw percentage, the usual Achilles’ heel of the Green Archers. Improvement saw the players taking fearless shots. Improvement saw the Green Archers not giving up until the very last second.
“It’s just the players following the system and being consistent about it,” shares Sauler about this season’s campaign towards the championship.
Sudden emergence
After trailing the title contenders with a dismal 3-4 win-loss card to end the first round of the eliminations, the Green Archers then swept the second round to arm themselves with a nine-game winning streak. With victories mostly coming from big fourth quarter runs and clutch end-game baskets, much of the team’s formidable performance can be credited to Sauler’s own set of strategies and adjustments before, during, and even after each game.
Come every DLSU timeout he maps out his instructions to the players and soon after, La Salle begins running ahead of their opponents. Expect to see a trailing La Salle team cut a huge deficit. Expect to see La Salle eventually take the lead. And as day-by-day improvements were embraced by the squad, game conclusions favored the Green Archers, capped by the momentous UAAP Season 76 championship.
“It’s more than just winning. Keep on improving on a daily basis, that’s what’s important,” adds Sauler pertaining to their thrilling overtime championship victory against UST. This season’s title is the eighth official one for the Green Archers since their last in 2007.
Finals MVP Jeron Teng credits Sauler for helping him build his maturity in his game through continuous improvement. “Ever since the start of the UAAP, inimplement na ni coach na every game, we have to improve because we won’t settle for a one game victory. We have bigger goals,” shares Teng.
On to the next season, Sauler hopes to make his team improve even more, “I’m just looking forward for the next season and hopefully we don’t make the same mistakes that we did in this season especially in the first half. And I just want to hope that we keep getting better and better.”
Sauler was part of the Green Archers’ roster that lost to UST in the 1994 UAAP Men’s Basketball finals. La Salle’s recent triumph was not an answer or a form of revenge though and he shares that there are no hard feelings. “Even on social media when they say payback time, I don’t like negative payback or ganti. It’s been 20 years. I don’t carry any grudges,” Sauler says humbly.
After winning the championship, Sauler has sincere words for possible future plans for himself, “As long as I get to teach basketball, I’m happy with it.”
Now, the Green Archers are victorious once again. As the glory is back in the realm of La Salle, as the UAAP crown is back in Taft Avenue, Lasallians welcome themselves into the beginning of a new basketball era. Glorious days of the past decade are no longer something to merely relive, it is history in which new victories are to be added. This is the new era. This is the Juno Sauler era.
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Read our preseason feature on Sauler at: http://thelasallian.com/2013/07/10/juno-sauler-an-underdogs-journey/
2 replies on “In Juno We Trust: The man behind the championship”
In all honesty, I had my doubts at first when I first heard of him. After that first round elims, the doubts grew stronger. After the second round, I started buying into him. After the Final Four, I started to think that his boys’ may have inherited part of his calmness and his steady focus. And after winning this title, I simply just started telling myself… #InJunoWeTrust.
Congrats Mr Sauler. Please make sure these men never lose sight of the mantra you have instilled into their minds and hearts. Make them feel like there is always something to work on and to improve on. Make them better on the court and off the court. ANIMO!
Wow Juno Sauler is our very own Mr. Kaizen! Reminds me on how Toyota became successful.
Animo La Salle!
Kaizen (改善?), Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the better”, refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, and business management. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy,life-coaching, government, banking, and other industries. -from Wikipedia