Vaqueros de Bayamón | |||
---|---|---|---|
Leagues | Baloncesto Superior Nacional | ||
Founded | 1930 | ||
History |
Vaqueros de Bayamón 1930–present |
||
Arena | Ruben Rodriguez Coliseum | ||
Capacity | 12,000 | ||
Location | Bayamón, Puerto Rico | ||
Team colors | Navy blue, gold, white |
||
Head coach | Paco Olmos | ||
Ownership | Miguel Jabbar Berdiel | ||
Championships | 14 (1933, 1935, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1988, 1995, 1996, 2009) | ||
Website | www |
||
Uniforms | |||
|
The Vaqueros de Bayamón are a Puerto Rican basketball team of the Baloncesto Superior Nacional based in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The Vaqueros play their home games at Rubén Rodríguez Coliseum a venue shared with the Liga de Voleibol Superior Femenino women's volleyball team Vaqueras de Bayamón. The Vaqueros are one of the most successful teams in the history of the Baloncesto Superior Nacional and have won 14 league championships, their last being in 2009.
The franchise began in 1930 and still stands as one of the league's original clubs. Led by Rubén Rodríguez, Bayamón established a BSN record for most consecutive championships with 5, from 1971 to 1975. After losing in the 2001, 2002 and 2005 BSN Finals, the Vaqueros won their record fourteenth championship by defeating the Piratas de Quebradillas for the 2009 title, their first in 13 years.
Among other records, the Vaqueros hold the record for most games won in a BSN season, 29 of them, set during the 1993 season.
Rubén Rodríguez played for the Vaqueros for 23 seasons, always wearing number 15. He debuted in the league in 1969 and scored 11,549 points and 6,178 rebounds in 631 games. He established various records in the league:
He also had the record of rebounds in a season from 1978-2008; this record was broken by Lee Benson on May 3, 2008 also joining the Vaqueros.
Rodríguez spent his whole career with the team Vaqueros of Bayamón. With the Vaqueros, he won 9 national championships, 1967, 1969, five in a row from 1971 to 1975, one in 1981 and one in 1988, the year that the team inaugurated his actual venue, that carries his name, the Rubén Rodríguez Coliseum. He also garnered the MVP award in 1979, and, once the three-point shot was established for the first time in the Puerto Rican tournament during the 1980 season, he started making shots from behind the three-point line too.
The Vaqueros de Bayamon team was founded in 1930 on what was formerly known as the Baloncesto Nacional (now Baloncesto Superior Nacional BSN) league, an amateur league. The team’s original name was Bayamon. The Bayamon team won their first championships in the league in 1933 and 1935. Becoming the second team to win two titles in the league, they were guided by the Professional Head Coach Onofre Carballeira. During the following decade (the 40's) the team was inactive due to WWII. By 1954 the team was competing in the BSN League again, but this time the team would be known as the Azules de Bayamón (lit. "Bayamon Blues") in Spanish. Under that name, Bayamon did not win a title.