Jojo Santo Tomas and Kasmira Engichy, Pacific Daily News Published 5:42 p.m. ChT March 11, 2017 | Updated 7 hours ago

Members of the St. Paul Warriors celebrate after their 63-56 win over the Father Duenas Friars to win the IIAAG Boys Basketball championship March 10 at a packed University of Guam Calvo Field House.(Photo: Kasmira Engichy/For PDN)

Around this time last year, the St. Paul Warriors were not as happy as they were Friday night.

They had just finished a dismal 5-11 season with a squad that was expected to do better, and they were relegated to the bench to watch another school win the championship they wanted.

Something clicked between the end of 2016 and start of the 2017 season for the Warriors.

They won their first game, and their second. Then then won again, and again and as the rest of the league muscled each other, it became clear they were fighting for second-best.

When the dust cleared, the Warriors finished a perfect 9-0, earning the top seed in the playoffs. They took a break from Guam basketball and visited Malaysia for a week, taking third in the Asian Christian Schools Conference tournament.

They ran to exhaustion, and they tasted defeat more than once. Yet coach Neo Pineda was only proud of them.

Back on Guam and fully recharged, the Warriors went on a mission. They blew out their first opponent by 20, then nipped their nemesis Guam High by a half-dozen points, setting up the finale.

The Warrior Machine, it seemed, was firing on full power. No hiccups like last year.

Last year, we didnt really have the chemistry and this year everything just clicked, said Jahmar White, the sophomore floor general. We just listened to our coach.

The team agreed that their chemistry off the court was valuable too, and that bodes well for the future.

White, a sophomore, said hell be back next year alongside most of his teammates, ready to defend their crown.

We will be doing the same thing as we did this year, he said. Well use what works.

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Warriors display balance and chemistry - Pacific Daily News