The Meralco huddle after a loss to Rain or Shine was one of the team’s longest this season, and it still seemed the time wasn’t enough to talk about the Bolts’ struggles this conference.
“As far as this conference goes, it’s very disappointing,” head coach Norman Black said as Meralco ended up with a 1-10 card, the worst in the league.
Meralco was the second worst defensive team, and had the worst net rating in the league at -7.5. The mentor took the blame for the lackluster performance, and reminded his troops to try and figure out what went wrong to come out better the next time.
“When you lose a lot, there is a tendency for negativity to creep in and for people to point fingers at the other guy. Being the coach, I’ll take the blame for the loss,” Black said.
“I will shoulder the disappointment but I need my players to be able to group themselves and figure out what they did wrong, how we can be better, and how we can improve next conference.”
Black added the Bolts focused on self-reflection during their talk for the last game. Meralco will take a break but Black said he wants his wards to keep working on their own before they get back as a team early next year.
“We knew we were eliminated so it was more about self-reflection and finding out how to get better, keeping ourselves in condition because we will take (a few) weeks off, basically I explained to them none of us have the right to take a break,” Black disclosed to Tiebreaker Times.
“Maybe take days off and then starting doing something on your own, staying in condition. Because while we are on a break, other teams are still playing so they’d be in conditiom. We can’t look at this as such type of vacation because it should be not.”
Bolts players quietly surfaced one by one from the Meralco dugout that Wednesday night, despondent and trying to look for answers.
It was surely not the way the team — and even observers — expected the conference to pan out, especially with the upgrades the Bolts had during the offseason.
But it is only the first conference together for the new-look squad, and there is more room to turn the Bolts’ fortunes around.
