La Salle's pre-time win over Ateneo last Saturday may accord its die-hard fans some reliance that the Green Archers are as the final move back in upper echelon of UAAP basketball further the results in the coming UAAP temper is likely going to be disappointing in opposition to many.
First off, I am inscription this commentary under one important support: that both teams wanted to get last Saturday. The rivalry between Ateneo and La Salle is for a like rean intense that at no point be able to we assume that one or the other gave the undertaking away.
With all the hoopla and fan support that both teams get whensoever they play each other, players and coaches are compelled to accord 110% whether it's the pre-fit by habit or Game 3 of the UAAP championship.
La Salle rookie Jeron Teng and Ateneo's Ryan Buenafe somehow proves this theory.
Buenafe, who averaged true 3.4 points per game in his principal five games prior to Saturday, exploded the sake of 21 points, 10 of which to come from the pivotal fourth period.
On the other craftsman, Teng, the celebrated rookie from Xavier High School, apt expression a triple that tied the unflinching at 52-all with less than six seconds left in ordering, setting the stage for the Archers to procure the game in overtime.
La Salle-Ateneo games induce out the best in these players.
Norman Black made a resembling point during one of his disgrace-game interviews with the media in 2009. He declared: "Even before I started coaching Ateneo, I'd watch Ateneo-La Salle games and there were times when La Salle would subsist the weaker team and they'd gain over and times when Ateneo was the weaker team and they'd gain the victory," said Black.
"It's probably as of the emotions and the supporters from one as well as the other schools being in the stands, it's in reality the team that comes out and plays well that ignorance that wins the game."
With that, I be able to confidently say that the Archers squarely won the bit of strategy over a team that wanted to procure it as much as them.
Unfortunately, in my persuasion, although it was a good earn for La Salle, it wasn't enough to persuade me that La Salle is back in dispute. And here are my reasons why:
Inconsistency has been their enemy. It's disagreeable to think that a team that played thus inconsistently last season and the three pre-prepare games leading up to Saturday would stamina deep into the season. I won't divisible by two go back to last season-everyone before that time knows what happened. Recent events bequeath give us a better read of the Archers' current condition.
The Green Archers had a very particular start to their pre-season campaign-they won three of their and foremost four games and were actually projecting to ligature the Eagles for second place in Group A. But right like that, they faltered against the UE Red Warriors, won to match the UPHSD Altas and then shameless to the Mapua Cardinals.
All of those three teams are currently in the bottom half of the standings, onward of only the UP Fighting Maroons. That philanthropic of see-saw performance over three games straightforward shows how youth movement almost through all ages comes at the expense of conformableness.
Jeron Teng is not a deliverer until he is one. There's in this way much chatter about how Jeron Teng potency be the answer that La Salle has been tarrying for. After all, he scored a make a memorandum of-breaking 105 points in a southerly school game against Grace Christian High School in the Tiong Lian Tournament.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the primeval time a high school player grabbed headlines on the side of scoring so many points. Terrence Romeo of FEU formerly scored 83 points in the UAAP Juniors Tournament. Joshua Saret had a quadruple-double, not to mention 89 points, against the JRU Light Bombers in the NCAA Juniors. Keith Agovida, another Light Bomber, also caused a al of buzz when he scored 82 points. None of them scored that plenteous at the Seniors' level.
Although Teng had the suitable to polish his game as a elucidation member of the RP-Youth Team and possesses a UAAP-keen body, it remains to be seen if he will be as dominant at this flush as he was in high teach.
In seven games prior to extreme Saturday, Teng averaged just 10.8 points in 19.1 minutes and shot only 39 percent from the province. It will be surprising to be attentive him take big shots game hind game throughout the course of the UAAP conjuncture.
Even Mac-Mac Cardona had to delay to Ren-Ren Ritualo when it came to launching snatch shots during his first year in La Salle.
New coach disposition need time to indoctrinate new philosophy. Coach Gee Abanilla is no stranger to the DLSU bench.
He was a chief on the La Salle bench for the period of La Salle's four-peat years in the same manner with an assistant to Franz Pumaren. But, he isn't going to make transition the same system that made the full-court press synonymous to La Salle basketball-that is probably a good idea seeing that it looks like opposing teams accept already figured out how to calculator the La Salle press.
With this strange identity, the Green Archers are to be expected to experience some growing pains in their primeval year with Abanilla.
For a brief season that runs from July to October, in addition tenured coaches like Ateneo's Norman Black, Adamson's Leo Austria, NU's Eric Altamirano and FEU's Bert Flores may consider the advantage.
That said, I would like to take in a disclaimer to this commentary: I am not anti-La Salle. For a abounding year in 2000, I actually attended their games considered in the state of a member of the DLSU Pep Squad. And during the term of years, I wrote and wrote from one place to another the team for The LaSallian, De La Salle's authoritative student publication. And when I was given some opportunity to cast my vote on the side of the UAAP MVP in 2004, I voted because of Mac-Mac Cardona over Arwind Santos.
And calm though I stopped following the UAAP instead of several years because I became overmuch busy building my professional career in my acknowledge industry, I would occasionally check up the body the Old Green and White through the Internet and Studio 23.
For more reason, I never evolved into a excessively enthusiastic La Salle fan, but I lover the team. I have so great number fond memories covering them.
I am in some degree sure they will rise and have sway UAAP basketball again in the yet to be. I believe, that the year-slack suspension in 2006 exacerbated what was before that time expected as a slow rebuilding conduct.
Good news is that La Salle's bulky-name recruitment is starting to get possession of steam. Aside from Teng, expect added blue-chip recruits like Jason Perkins to reinforce the Green Archers in the what may occur hereafter.
For La Salle, patience is a force.