Suspension to send wrong signal — Franz

La Salle basketball team coach Franz Pumaren said yesterday suspending the Green Archers in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) may dissuade other schools from investigating academic records of players and voluntarily disclosing if fraudulent documents were used to satisfy enrollment requirements.

"It will send the wrong signal to schools because here is a case where La Salle came out, in the spirit of transparency, to reveal that a player used falsified documents to qualify for college and could be suspended for telling the truth," said Pumaren.

Although the UAAP Board of Trustees will not be convened until next month to discuss the La Salle issue, the possibility of a suspension looms in as much as in 1995, Adamson University was slapped a one-year ban for complicity in doctoring Marlou Aquino’s transcript.

Pumaren, however, said La Salle’s case is different from Adamson’s because the school was not involved in falsifying the player’s Philippine Educational Placement Test (PEPT) certificate of rating.

Under UAAP rules, the school’s complicity must be proved to justify a suspension.

In Aquino’s case, his transcript was discovered to be tampered while attempting to transfer to the University of the East. In La Salle’s case, it was the school itself that blew the whistle.

"It’s hard enough to give up the 2004 trophy that La Salle worked so hard to win," said Pumaren. "A suspension would be too harsh because it will mean penalizing the school for being honest."

Pumaren reiterated that he knew nothing about the player’s allegedly falsified PEPT certificate until he was informed by school officials that it was under investigation before Game 2 of the UAAP finals between La Salle and Far Eastern University (FEU) last Oct. 6.

Pumaren appealed for sobriety in the wake of wild rumors circulating that more players and more schools are guilty of illegal recruitment practices. He said La Salle’s openness should not be exploited by those with hidden agendas.

"What was an attempt to be honest has been turned into a witchhunt," said Pumaren. ‘This is the time when all of us should make a clean breast of things, not a time when we should point fingers. We owe it to the schools, the faculty, the students, the administration and the players to be honest."

Pumaren said he is looking forward to La Salle’s campaign next season and confirmed the Archers are playing in an international collegiate tournament sponsored by Brigham Young University in Honolulu on Nov. 9-12. Teams from Australia, New Zealand and Japan are among the varsities competing in the Hawaii joust.

Pumaren said while this season’s Archers were a relatively "small" team, next year’s lineup will be "big."

La Salle’s Joseph Yeo, J. R. Aquino, Jun-Jun Cabatu and Lionel Rivera won’t be back next season after finishing their eligibility and Mark Benitez, rumored to be academically ineligible, will likely not return, too.

The holdovers are Ryan Arana, Rico Maierhofer, Tyrone Tang, Pocholo Villanueva, Peejay Barua, J. V. Casio, Oliver Cua, Kish Co and James Mangahas.

Pumaren said among next season’s rookies are 6-6 Marko Batricevic of La Salle Greenhills, 6-6 Brian Ilag of the Philippine College of Criminology, 5-11 Simon Atkins of La Salle Zobel, 5-10 Allan Mangahas of Philippine Christian University and possibly, two more recruits whom he’d rather not identify at the moment.