Last Sunday (December 3) may go down in the history of Pinoy basketball as a rare day of two (not only one) blue-green clashes for a championship. Whether or not it was the first time ever in the Philippines will have to be established through basketball diehards and students of the sport’s history in the country. In Metro Manila, Ateneo de Manila out-steadied De La Salle University, 88-86, in the Game 3 of the UAAP Finals. Here in Cebu at the national finals of the 32nd SBP Passerelle Twin Tournament backed by Milo, La Salle Greenhills defeated Sacred Heart School-Ateneo de Cebu, 66-51, to win the national championship of the SBP division of the tournament. Final score for the day was 1-all for the blue and green. I’m sure those from Manila won’t count it as a real blue-green phenomenon since the blue team here was from Cebu (and not Manila). But it is what it is.
The interesting highlight from both championship games was how the championships were won. At the UAAP, La Salle was a pre-tournament favorite to repeat as champions due to the fact that Ben Mbala was still on board, and they had some of the most talented players on their roster, all a year older and more mature coming off their championship year. On the other hand, Ateneo was practically the same team that was swept, 0-2, in the UAAP Finals of 2016. While their head-to-head tally in the elimination round was 1-1, the Green Archers were still favored to repeat as champions. This was even more glaring when they came from behind to snatch Game 2 and gained the crucial momentum going into Game 3. But the Blue Eagles had something else in mind, didn’t they? Going to its collective strength of core players, Ateneo (the team), proved to be steadier in the clutch against La Salle’s thoroughbreds. It was a case of one side of regular hardworking blue-collar horses outdoing a stable of high-breed horses that couldn’t deliver when it counted most.
To others, it was a case of Coach Tab Baldwin’s system beating Coach Aldin Ayo’s mayhem and talent system, proving that a bunch of regular-but talented, hard-working players who executed and worked within a system, can overcome a set of individually talented players. Case in point: Isaac Go was the least athletic/graceful and most “awkward” player on the floor among the ten at the end-game. Yet he made the triple that rocked the Araneta Coliseum with 24 seconds left in the game. Then you have Anton Asistio and Matt Nieto who also drilled triples out of plays that the team practices regularly at every training session and pre-game preparations. These weren’t athletic or acrobatic plays, but simple dribble-drive kick-out passes to the open man outside the three-point line. All these plays were the ultimate models of the system that Tab Baldwin had preached for two seasons, and which Ateneo somehow mastered. At games, coaches always remind their players to always execute the system, the play, the game plan, the strategy. For all of the game’s forty minutes.
La Salle missed out on these instructions for a brief two minutes in the end-game, but this was all Ateneo needed to post that 80-70 lead before La Salle charged back to slash the lead to 82-80. Then La Salle missed out on a defensive execution on the dagger of a triple by Go, sealing their own fate.
Cebu’s blue vs. green version was something else. It was a simple case study of how much stronger the Manila teams are over those from the probinsya. La Salle Greenhills dominated all departments and scored the coast-to-coast win with relative ease. Their top players were not only tall, but also athletic, agile and impressively mature (for 12 year olds).
They played with the maturity and level of high school student-athletes. SHS-Ateneo was in the game for only the opening minutes as La Salle simply took over, imposed their strength, and doused any hopes of a promdi upset over a Metro Manila team. This is all attributed to their level of skills honed by their exposure to Manila leagues where they play against the country’s best Under 12 year old teams. Ironically, La Salle Greenhills defeated Ateneo de Manila in the semifinals of the Metro Manila regional games before tripping La Salle Zobel in the finals. But it’s not like SHS-Ateneo didn’t have any talent.
They wouldn’t have gotten this far if they weren’t loaded with topnotch players. During the weekend tournament, they defeated the teams from Luzon and Mindanao via double-digit margins, setting the Manila vs. Cebu showdown. La Salle Greenhills was simply head and shoulders above everyone else in terms of talent and depth, while SHS-Ateneo was above the level of Luzon and Mindanao. It would’ve taken a miracle for the Cebu side to dethrone the three-peat champions from the big city.
The two blue-green showdowns illustrated how a team oozing with talent can be overcome by a team with hard-working players executing a system almost perfectly. But when a team’s talent, athleticism and maturity level is so much higher than the other’s, it’s virtually impossible for the other side to score a win.