The Eagles soared; Archers lost their nerve

They were all human beings, each with two arms, two hands, two legs, two eyes. Stark naked, you couldn’t tell them apart. But when they suited up, grunted, formed words, limbered, got out of their dressing rooms, then ambled with a purpose to the floor, the two worlds around them roared like the ancient spectators of Rome – wild, woolly, fire in their stomachs and thunder in their throats. Thus did Saturday’s Ateneo-La Salle championship rites begin at the Araneta Coliseum. It was and remains the Philippines’ most celebrated single sports event. Why? You answer me.

Traffic all over would stop. And even in the Middle East, of course in America and Southeast Asia wherever Filipinos migrated or worked for a living by the millions, working tools would be downed. Nothing, but nothing could deter them from watching Ateneo-La Salle on TV. And even if the Yankees were preparing to invade Iraq, so what? The only event that mattered was La Salle-Ateneo, a fireball in the sky. Hello.

Well, that was the way it was prior to the game.

It may sound crazy, and it was crazy. Blackmarket tickets were selling for thousands of pessilos apiece, if you wanted box or ringside. Lines had formed at early dawn and by 8 a.m. tickets were gone. Filipinos had grave, compelling national problems? Poverty? Graft and corruption? Crime and violence? Kidnap for ransom? Communist guerrillas belching countryside turbulence? A Congress going haywire and rooting for a wanted fugitive Mark Jimenez? The Abu Sayyaf back in business in Zamboanga, bomb-killing an American Green Beret and wounding another?

Hello again. Everything stops when Eagles and Archers meet for the UAAP cage championship.

You couldn’t get anybody in this burgh to talk about anything else. At Binondo, we understand, tens if not hundreds of millions of buckaroos were wagered, La Salle a favorite at 5-4. Even 3-2. What’s it about the Filipino that pulls out all the stops when high and hysterical hoopla is concerned? Where basketball occupies the tabernacle even if the Filipino gets badly banged about in international cage competition? Where the earth faults stir and threaten to produce an earthquake when Ateneo and La Salle both get to the finals? And the winds whine? And then they whip the crowds of Ateneo and La Salle into primitive frenzy?

Is an Ateneo-La Salle championship game all there is to vital and civilized existence in the Philippines? I don’t know. You answer those questions. I’d like to get my sanity back and concentrate professionally on Saturday’s game.

Oh yes, I did predict La Salle would whip the whey out of Ateneo. The Archers didn’t and there lies the tale of what often sports is all about. Nerve. I also said the Archers at their best would be like Pete Sampras at his best. Unbeatable. The Green Archers were not at their best Saturday. But that steals no thunder from the Blue Eagle victory. The Archers lost because they lost their nerve. Great champions should never lose their nerve. Witness Muhammad Ali, the immortal Pele, the Chicago Bulls when Michael Jordan was around, the New York Yankees when Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and afterwards Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio were aboard.

The Blue Eagles won because they dug their heart out of their collective chest, cupped it in their hands and never once showed fear. They fought as they never fought before. Often, the La Salle defenses faltered and even fell as Ateneo fought for every loose ball. The formerly impregnable walls of Jericho gave way as the Archers penetrated La Salle’s defenses. Enrico Villanueva and Rich Alvarez, even LA Tenorio and Jec Chia boomed from the mulberry bush, Quimpo sealing the game for Ateneo with a cross-over across the English Channel, 73-62. Just so many minutes to go. Tenorio also going great guns from afar.

You waited for that fabled La Salle counter-offensive like the Battle of the Bulge. You expected a feral-faced George Patton to bark his commands and exact death-dealing firepower from his tanks. You waited for Mike Cortez to resurrect his magic in the last game. In that game he threw short knives and long knives with uncanny accuracy. Yes, Mike Cortez would gather his charges anew with Mongol ferocity, a bald Genghis Khan sweeping across the floor with his cavalry. The La Salle counter-burst came but only in short spurts. Ateneo held the hill, held every hill and that was where the game was won.

What happened to La Salle? The first answer is that Mike Cortez just did not come through, that he played an erratic sometimes wobbly game. True enough. The second answer is that La Salle never got its normal lumberjack rhythm going. Its big men were unable this time to manacle Rico Villanueva, unable to man defense, unable to pile-drive, unable to hit up close. Their shooting was lousy. Only Adonis Sta. Maria had his knuckles intact. The night’s Archer surprise was BJ Manalo, a former Atenean who caught fire fighting the Ateneans. But there was only one Manalo that night.

The third is what I said earlier, that in the face of mounting tension, the pressure to clinch five-peat, the Green Archers lost their bearing. Of course, Ateneo played well, with an intensity that was not there before. The Eagles wanted the championship, and they wanted it badly. And you could feel it. Imagine the diminutive Tenorio hitting from uptown and downtown? And Chia, a former bench-warmer, getting his licks in?

I know little of about the role coaching played. It was obvious Franz Pumaren couldn’t get his boys abroad a freight train that would whistle damnation throughout the journey. Maybe even Pumaren had the shivers in the face of Ateneo’s amazing and unexpected power game. Maybe La Salle coach Joel Banal was lucky that night. Maybe it was he who loaded Ateneo’s bomb bay with spit, fire and daisy cutters. I don’t accept that God was on Ateneo’s side. Because that means God was not on La Salle’s side, and therefore He was playing favorites.

As championship basketball goes, it was not a great game. Far from it.

There were fumbles galore particularly on La Salle’s side, miscues and misplays. There was hardly any court brilliance. What made the game, what defined it, what brought out its intestines was the ancient and continuing feud and rivalry between Ateneo and La Salle. During the 50s and 60s, it was largely college basketball, a passion fed by family fanaticism. Once a La Sallite, always a La Sallite. Once an Atenean, always an Atenean. There were hardly any cross-overs then, as is common today, graduates having studied in both. Their loyalties are split or dispersed, no longer prone to mayhem and madcap loyalty.

In the old days, when they were still in the folds of the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), rumbles and fist-fights just outside the Rizal coliseum were not uncommon. Inside the stadium, much smaller than Araneta, the hoots, the shouts, the bellows, the cheers were amplified. Oldtimers like me still vividly remember Kurt Bachmann’s mother vaulting out of ringside with a pointed umbrella, screaming imprecations at the player who fouled her son and chasing him until the referees stepped in. That was fun. There too was a cabinet secretary, who occupied alternately the education and finance portfolios. An Ateneo alumnus. In a fit of outrage against a referee’s decision, this highly respected and dignified man hurled his chair at the basketball floor. Paper missiles rained on the court.

It was coño territory against Arrrneow territory. The so-called coño kids were the La Sallites. In the old days, Spanish mestizos galore studied at La Salle, so punetas and punetasos were often the order of the day. Ateneo was of course Arrrneow deliberately slurred in Blue Eagle country. Slurred English with crisp vowels was the stock-in-trade of American Jesuit-educated Ateneans. Symbolic or typical were Raul Manglapus and Leony Ma. Guerrero. Tell me if my memory fails me. But on the La Salle side then, there was Pepe Esteva. He was a player and brawler extraordinary whose deadly right cross downed many an enemy player. Boyoboy, could he hit! He was the darling of the crowd during basketball brawls.

Now I am told the fist-fights, the brawls have gone out of fashion.

The students are now reportedly more mature, no longer inclined to vent their anger and rivalry with flying fists, no longer consumed with hate, the Atenean for the La Sallite and vice versa. The girls today are more visible, taller, with heftier busts, prettier and articulate. Bolder. And the two colleges, excuse me universities, have these girls enrolled by the bushel. Faculties, I understand, are also in portions cross-over hybrid. Ateneo professors and instructors have been lured to teach in La Salle, and presumably vice versa. The UP faculty, I am told has been prodigally raided by both Ateneo and La Salle who offer better pay and working conditions.

Ateneo jubilation will simmer down after a week. Then we shall all wait again for next year. See how much extra territory you cover when you write about an Ateneo-La Salle championship game?