Belay the word that the demise of the Ateneo Blue Eagles is at hand. They aren't just ready to conclude their championship run and step aside for the Far Eastern University Tamaraws. Who said that the post-season tournaments do not mean a thing? There might have been a sparse crowd of just a little over a hundred but the two squads gave it their all until the Blue Eagles turned the game into a rout in the third quarter as they coasted to a 90-63 victory to even up matters in the best-of-three finals series.
In Game One, Ateneo tried to match up against the more mobile bigs of FEU and they got beaten. Come the second match, after a close first quarter that saw Tamaraw center Aldrech Ramos on fire for 8 points, Norman Black went with a smaller line-up that while giving up some heights was no less tenacious on defense but liked to run. They gave the Tams a glimpse of what was to come with a 17-0 blast towards the end of 2nd quarter but FEU with their rally in Game One still fresh in their minds came storming back. Yet Ateneo held the lead 42-33 at the turn.
As the second half resumed, a triple here, some nifty defensive gems that were converted into buckets and the game turned into a clinic for hustle, team ball, and savvy. While Nico Salva, despite getting rejected twice by Pipo Noundou, scored a game high 26 points, I thought it was Oping Sumalinog who turned the game around. In the previous UAAP playoffs, he guarded Dylan Ababou, Khasim Mirza, and Tata Bautista during the Final Four and alternated fronting several Red Warriors during the Finals. His size, long arms, and inside-outside game is like having a second Nonoy Baclao out on the perimeter. His huge offensive rebound for a lay in over MacJan Vinluan showed what his was all about and that play carried over to the rest of the team as Jai Reyes, the second smallest player on the court after Emman Monfort, swooped in for a defensive board during an FEU freethrow miss and for another inside the lane for a lay up over two Tams.
FEU tried to match up the small ball tactics by bringing in Christian Manalo and Chris Exciminiano but that made them easy pickings for Eric Salamat who picked them clean twice for a pair of baskets. And their big guns who led their scoring parade in the first half -- Ramos, Ric Cawaling, and RR Garcia -- had gone silent with the suffocating defense applied on them forced the taller FEU team into a jump shooting one.
With three minutes left in the game, both squads went to their bench as "Roll Out the Victory" floated around the Ynares Gym in Pasig.
Ateneo 90 - Salva 26, Salamat 20, Baclao 11, Sumalinog 8, Buenafe 6, Long 5, Reyes 5, Gonzaga 3, Chua 2, Austria 2, Monfort 2, Golla 0, Burke 0, De Chavez 0, Tiongson 0
FEU 63 - Cawaling 18, Ramos 12, Cervantes 12, Sanga 8, Vinluan 4, Exciminiano 2, Knuttel 2, Manalo 2, Garcia 2, Noundou 1, Guerrero 0
Notes: Once more Ateneo bounced back from a loss this season with a rout of its foe. Somehow, this team reminds me of in some way, the 1987 & 1988 Ateneo champion teams. They won almost every tournament they participated in those years before the loss of its stars saw them crash. Of course, it's a different time and with a program in place to ensure that the Dark Ages is a thing of the of the past.
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