Guiao upbeat on Rain or Shine's future

MANILA, Philippines -- Despite being swept in the PBA Philippine Cup semifinals, the future is bright for the Rain or Shine Elasto Painters, head coach Yeng Guiao said.

Rain or Shine absorbed a 4-0 series loss against the San Miguel Beermen as they exited the All-Filipino conference earlier in the week.

On Friday, the Beermen came back from 19 points down to boot the Elasto Painters, 107-100, in Game 4.

Despite this, Guiao voiced optimism of the team’s future, saying the squad will be better next conference.

“We are happy and sad at the same time. We arrived at the semifinals for the first time in a long while, and that is a big achievement. We knew that San Miguel is great, they are hard to beat in the series, but we still hoped to win one or two games,” the coach told reporters in Filipino.

“But, we learned a lot in this series. And, as I said, we’ll come back to the next conference as a better team. We know where we are lacking, our strengths, so in the offseason we will try to improve on those aspects of our trying to build a contender team,” he added.

The coach stressed that meeting the behemoth Beermen squad would help the young Elasto Painters in their development.

“I think that’s the takeaway, for us to experience this as a young team, what it takes to beat a team like San Miguel. We needed to go through this,” he said.

“I cannot coach experience. The experience is needed to immerse in what it feels, how the preparation goes and what it takes to succeed deep in the playoffs because it is what will speed up the improvement of our team,” he added.

The group is mostly made up of players in their 20s and a handful of veterans.

“So, we will be a lot better team in the next conference.”

Meanwhile, Guiao emphasized that he believes there are six or seven players who are capable of being the team’s cornerstone, and that the group just needs about two or three more pieces to complement them.

“We have the draft to do that. Two first round picks in the draft, so we will get the resource or talent there, combine with the younger guys. We have to keep Gabe [Norwood] and Beau [Belga] so they can keep on helping us in the team.”