HALFWAY through the NCAA Season 102 and Allen Ricardo and his entire coaching staff has an urgent problem that needs solving pronto.
The known bad news is that Letran might very well play the entire the men's basketball group stage without its star guard Titing Manalili, who sprained his knee in its 96-86 win over Lyceum last Thursday at the Filoil Ecooil Center.
What the Knights are discovering now is how bad the blow is looking at it from their end.
While teams eventually figure out on how to make up for the loss of certain key cogs in their offense, the thing about losing Manalili is that he is literally the Knights' entire offense.
READ: Mapua hacks out tough OT win over Letran for fourth straight win
(K)night and Day difference
With Manalili, who is averaging 13.8 points, 10.2 assists, 4.0 steals and 3.4 rebounds, on board, Letran's turned into one of the most potent offensive machines in college, dropping 87 points a game. It's no surprise that the Knights won four of their five games with him on board — the lone loss coming in overtime against San Beda.
Without Manalili, Letran lost both of its games — and while a one-point loss to Arellano and a two-point overtime loss to Mapua shouldn't be a cause of concern, the numbers in both of those games tell a deeper story.
The Knights are deep enough and talented enough to hang around and even win games without the Cebuano playmaker. The problem is the quality of the shots that they're taking.
Without their chief playmaker, the Knights' have resorted to more one-on-one plays, and the numbers have reflected that.
In the five games that Manalili has played in, 63 percent of their field goals have come from assists — the Knights have shot 44.32 percent in that stretch and 33 percent from downtown on a healthy 9.2 conversions from threes.
In the two games without Manalili, their assists numbers dropped from 21.6 to 12.5 and it showed with the total production of the team. They've only averaged 74 points in those two games and are shooting far worse from different areas from the floor — hitting just 24.1 percent from threes with a much lower conversion rate of seven, and a 38 percent field goal percentage.
Their bigs have also suffered with Manalili sidelined. Kevin Santos is only averaging five points per game on a sour 25 percent clip while Aaron Buensalida is faring no better with 4.5 points per game.
To no surprise, their league-best 41 points in the paint with Manalili dropped to 33. Jimboy Estrada, Manalili's running mate, also struggled putting up 11 a night without him.
Plenty of bright spots, still
But it's not all bad news for the Knights.
Their young backcourt in sophomore Chad Gammad and rookie Justin Cargo has stepped up and kept the team afloat and has shown the ability to be this team's cornerstone.
Gammad's shotmaking has been invaluable for the Knights, averaging 20.5 points per game on a healthy 53 percent three-point clip in 9.5 attempts per game in those two losses.
Cargo, transitioning to the point guard position with Manalili out, has put up 15 points, 4.5 assists and four rebounds as the Knights' chief facilitator.
The Knights certainly have the tools — as they still have their veteran core in Estrada, Santos and Buensalida to work with alongside their young talents in the aforementioned Cargo, Gammad and Denzil Sison-Walker.
The challenge now is how they'll be maximizing those talents, the same way they did unlocked Manalili's to become Letran's offensive engine.
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