Up is reasonably good, but still just a work in progress, in the sense that it still doesnt fully use its difficult-to-match advantages.
First, it can use true DDO, and not the disastrously wrong bansot DDO of the seyers. The correct idea is to use a big (6'5-6'8) super-athlete to explosively rampage through the shaded lane. He has 3 options: go for the humiliation tomahawk throwdowns, drop-pass to one of 2 well-positioned bigs near the basket, or bullet pass to opened catch-and-shoot 3point specialists. Chances are very good that the guy covering him cant stop all 3 options at the same time. Unless he is a monster defender athlete himself.
Up has tallish lopez, belmonte and torculas who can be easily converted to a pinoy poor-man's version of a bryant or pippen for this DDO assault. Up has trainable strong bigs and reasonable 3point shooters to make DDO work effectively, when sh*t hits the fan as opposing teams lock down on defense.
Second, up also clearly hasnt perfected a two- or three-man "bruise brothers" offense in the shaded lane. This is strange as any frontline combination of qmb, dikachi, stevens and alter cant be overmatched by any uaap, and probably pba, team today, in the past, and near-future. At the very least, they can send opponents to too-fast fouling hell in containing them. I feel up hasnt prioritized this, as sitio-style balling still works in the uaap.
The last 4 games of any uaap season are the worst, as the desperation and physicality of opposition defense reach fever pitch. These four games are when you use up's tall and strong bigs to very reliably punk out the "too-small bigs" of other uaap teams in choking zone and man-zone defenses.
Up's guards and small forwards though are more than decent already at full-court and half-court press defenses.
