The Final Score: For UP coach Ricky Dandan, maroon is the color of fortitude

“Anong ginagawa mo?!?!”

Even if you were walking around the Academic Oval or eating tapsilog in Rodic’s, you would’ve heard Ricky Dandan’s thundering voice. It was that loud.

Dandan, head coach of the University of the Philippines men’s basketball team, had spotted a miscue during practice inside the UP Gym. A player wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do and went to a spot on the court where he wasn’t supposed to be.

That mistake, with just weeks to go before the start of the UAAP season, sparked audible fireworks from Dandan.

“What are you going to do?!?!”

Dandan, while angrily chewing gum, raised his right hand and motioned to his players to huddle around him. Before talking, he looked down, stared at his black Under Armour cross-trainers for half a minute, and rubbed his forehead.

Dandan knew the team had renewed confidence heading into the homestretch of the preseason. He knew the team, composed mostly of rookies, was eager to play actual UAAP games. He also knew they couldn’t afford to commit mental mistakes, even the trivial ones only meticulous coaches like him could see.

“UAAP na!” Dandan, a former UP Fighting Maroon, screamed. “Yung utak natin pang-summer pa eh!”

Dandan, 51, is a commanding figure on the floor. He is built like a crusty, barrel-chested five-star general. Only this general wears maroon crewneck cotton shirts and black knee-length shorts when he oversees training.

You know Michael Chiklis, the hefty actor who plays The Thing in the blockbuster movie The Fantastic Four? Just add more black hair, hang a whistle around his neck, place him in the middle of a frenetic basketball gym and he’ll look exactly like Dandan.

Dandan’s normal facial expression, or his face when calm, is already forceful. His eyes are always alert. His eyebrows are always ready to meet in a nanosecond. He inhales oxygen and exhales tension. Basketball, heightened by the pursuit of perfectly executed plays, has given him the look of perpetual anxiety.

“Coach Ricky is a perfectionist,” UP guard Mikee Reyes says. “He notices the smallest things. He wants them fixed right away. He doesn’t let time pass na paulit-ulit mali yung ginagawa ng team. He fixes it right away.”

Dandan’s desire to immediately correct errors during practice sessions, however, doesn’t expose his impatience. When he took over the UP Men’s Basketball Team in late 2010, he knew, like everyone else who followed UP games, that it was going to be a multi-year rehabilitation program.

When one takes over a team that habitually finishes anywhere between sixth to eighth place in a league of eight, patience isn’t just an option, it’s a necessity.

“When I accepted this job two years ago, alam ko na right away that on the third year, [it] will be the full rebuilding phase,” Dandan, who is also an assistant coach for GlobalPort in the PBA, revealed. “Naubos na mga veterans. Half of the team is new. We have five holdovers, three returnees and eight new guys. So if you’re saying that I’m the right man for this team, baka nga, because I expected this from the very start.”

Dandan liked the execution of a half-court defensive scheme. His players were trying to master it for the last ten minutes. During several attempts to perform Dandan’s defensive plot, players ran into screens, assignments were missed, and fingers were pointed.

At last, Dandan saw a breakthrough. He shouted, “Nice! Nice!” He clapped and many of the players on the court including Raul Soyud, Julius Wong, Tata Marata, Kyles Lao, Moriah Gingerich, Andre Paras and Henry Asilum clapped with him.  

“Coach Ricky would seem like a coach who is very hard on his players and it probably is true,” Charles Tiu, who worked alongside Dandan on the Powerade Tigers coaching staff last season, said. “He’s a very tough and feisty coach, but it’s with good reason.

"More than just basketball, it’s the values he imparts to his players and the principles he won’t compromise even if it would mean losing players. Definitely, he’s one of the seasoned coaches that we have. He’s still one of the better teachers of the game.”


Frederick Oliver Dandan has that walk that old players have. Like you could tell he used to move like lightning on the court. When he played for the Fighting Maroons from 1982 to 1985, he gave whatever the team needed.

They asked him to play power forward. He said, “Sure.”

They asked him to play small forward. He said, “No problem.”

They asked him to play point guard. He said, “Ayos lang.”

They asked him to stop opposing guards from scoring. He said, “Oo ba.”

“Ricky was more of a defensive-minded guard during our time,” Ronnie Magsanoc, Dandan’s teammate in UP, shared. “It was an era where big guards such as Boysie Zamar (UE), Benjie Gutierrez (UST), Bai Padilla (FEU), Romanito Roa (FEU) and Louie Alas (Adamson) manned the backcourt. Ricky was a perfect match-up against them. He had a decent mid-range jumper and a good finisher in transition. But this was 40 pounds ago (laughs). But he was a vocal teammate who was a positive presence in the locker room.”

Dandan has clearly lost some foot speed. A prominent belly, which seems to be a requirement for anyone who wants to join Dandan’s intimate circle of hard-working and trust-worthy assistant coaches, slows him down even more.

His eyes, though, have been sharpened by years of watching players, teams and games.

His legendary vocal chords, albeit raspy, have been fine-tuned by over a decade of barking at referees and shouting instructions to his players. Occasionally, he even flexes his vocal chords at the expense of an opposing coach.

“We were playing in Cebu and Coach Ricky got upset,” Alex Compton, who was Dandan’s starting guard when Dandan coached the Manila Metrostars in the Metropolitan Basketball Association in 1998, recalled. “The other coach was yelling at me and coach Ricky ran over to the other side and started yelling at the other coach and he told that other coach, ‘Don’t you dare talk to my player!’”

“I cannot be who I am not. I’m just being myself,” Dandan explained. “I am not the corporate type. But things have changed a bit. Through experience in college basketball and in the pros, I know when to push and when not to push anymore. I look at the kids and how they respond to a particular type of approach.”

There’s something admirably throwback about Dandan. Like his mentor Joe Lipa, he fights to exist in a universe of hard-earned values and stubborn nobility.

While people have the liberty to abuse the Fighting Maroons with every imaginable joke on the internet, know that one unbending man will absorb all the snide remarks, take on what appears to be the biggest challenge in the UAAP, and compete with Clint Eastwood-worthy authenticity only the genuine article can offer.

“Walang cookingan. That’s what Coach Ricky always tells us,” Reyes shared.

Cookingan, the basketball equivalent of exchanging bullsh*t or nagbobolahan lang, is a popular term coaches and players use nowadays. Kung cooking ka, you can’t be trusted. “He wants you to be true to your word. He doesn’t want you to hide from him kahit na natatakot kaming lahat sa kanya. (laughs)”

If Dandan expects his players to be honest with him, he can also be painfully honest with them. At one point during their preseason preparation, the team reached an impasse. After a horrid loss to the College of Saint Benilde, he felt he needed to provide both a personal and organizational jolt.

“We got blown-out by Benilde by thirty,” Reyes, who is expected to play like a veteran playmaker on a squad composed mostly of newcomers, shared. “And we don’t believe that Benilde is thirty points better than us. So Coach Ricky resigned right after the game, then and there, inside the dugout.”

“We had a one-on-one meeting the next day in a conference room,” Reyes added. “So we talked for over an hour. And he asked me, ‘Ayaw mo ba sa akin?’ And I said, ‘Hindi naman coach.’ I just wanted them to understand that it’s a process for me also. But I told him, ‘It’s on me coach. I need to play better.’ If I’m not going to take the blame, who will? And coach Ricky agreed to put the incident behind us and just told me to play my game.”

The uphill climb for the coach and his players is real. The man who will lead the program’s revival is just as real. Pwera cooking, it’s going to be tough. Really tough. But UP’s gum-chewing general loves this challenge just as much as he loves UP. He is always emboldened by the famous UP mantra: “In UP we don’t have much, but we have enough.” He is a Fighting Maroon to the core.

“I went to UP to try and make a difference,” Dandan stressed. “I really feel that I can make a difference here.” - AMD, GMA News