Green Journal: Coach Juno Sauler v.1

In the first edition of this year’s Green Journal, DLSU head coach Juno Sauler details what the past summer has been like for the team and what he learned from his time with the newly minted NBA Champion San Antonio Spurs. With a UAAP title under his belt, he is more than ready to continue improving the team that he has built heading into this season’s opener against the FEU Tamaraws on July 12.

Over the summer, we’ve been practicing every day and then we’ve also been trying to get as much tune-up games as possible. By joining FilOil, it’s been about trying to get experience also, especially for the younger players who are playing with the team for the first time. Winning the championship was great but we still have a lot of work to do. There were some things from FilOil that we still need to address, so we try to work on it every day in practice and hopefully it will prepare us coming into this year’s UAAP season.

The season is probably going to last for around three and a half months. We’re looking forward to playing against all the teams and expect everyone to contend as well. It’s not really getting ready for opening day but making sure that we continue to grow as a team and when the season ends we hope to be ready by then not just at the start. When the season ends, we wanna be where we should be.

One of the things we took from our time with the San Antonio Spurs was just learning and re-learning the basic principles of the game and it’s not really trying to do what they do because they have a different set of players. Their players have different abilities from what we have so it’s more of the principles and fundamentals of basketball that we try to relearn every now and then, especially in practice.

So far we’re okay in terms of how the players have developed. Everyone’s working very hard, so it’s not really the improvement of one player but I’m more concerned with the improvement of the team as a whole. Different aspects come into play when we choose the final line up for this season. One is looking at whole team being able to play the best they can. It’s not really the talent of each individual but whether they can work together, so that’s one thing we have to consider. There are more considerations that factor into what the final line up will be but we just wanna make sure to come up with a decision that’s best for the team.

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Learn about coach Juno Sauler’s journey at http://thelasallian.com/2013/10/13/in-juno-we-trust-the-man-behind-the-championship/

Sauler will continue writing his journal for The LaSallian. You can follow the rest of his journey at http://thelasallian.com