BROTHERS Jeron Alvin Teng and Jeric Allen Teng battled each other in the best-of-three championship series between De La Salle University and University of Santo Tomas during the 2013 University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) men’s basketball tournament.
The younger Jeron, a sophomore, wound up winning the title and the Finals Most Valuable Player award as the Green Archers snared their first UAAP crown since 2007 via the maximum three games.
In the process, Jeric was denied of any ring in his fifth and final year of UAAP eligibility with the hard-luck Growling Tigers.
Three academic years apart, did you know that the Teng siblings were once high school teammates for Xavier School in the Metro Manila Tiong Lian Basketball Association, a league composed of Chinese-Filipino schools in the MM area?
In 2009, the two prolific brothers helped guide the Xavier School Golden Stallions to the MMTLBA title – the second of what would be a league record-setting “four-peat” championship reign.
At the time, Jeric was a high school senior and the Gold and Blue’s team skipper. Jeron, on the other hand, was in his freshman year.
Xavier School finished with a perfect 9-0 record during the 2009 tournament. Some other notable players that saw action in the MMTLBA that season were guard Jose Anton (Jett) Manuel, the Tengs’ XS teammate who later suited up for the University of the Philippines in the UAAP for several seasons (he sat out Season 76 to focus on his studies); guard Isaac Lim, an Uno High School product who has worn the Ateneo de Manila University colors for the last two years and earned a UAAP title ring with the Blue Eagles in 2012; guard Janrey Garrido, a Hope Christian High School alum who was Jeric’s teammate on the 2012 UST unit; frontliner Kent Lao, a former St. Stephen’s High School star who was a seldom-used substitute on this year’s UAAP runner-up Growling Tigers squad; and St. Jude Catholic School products Kim Lo and Jason Ligad, who suited up in the UAAP this past season with UST and UP, respectively.
In 2009, Jeric Teng topped the MMTLBA in scoring for the second consecutive year with a monstrous 39.3-point clip while earning league MVP honors as well.
He owned the top four single-game scoring performances in the tournament – an MMTLBA career-high 55 points vs. Chiang Kai Shek College (109-87), 52 vs. Hope Christian High School (120-43 in an opening-day game), 47 vs. St. Jude Catholic School (118-73) and 44 vs. Grace Christian College (91-87). All were registered in a span of 20 days in January.
The 6-foot-3 Jeric actually chalked up eight of the top 10 scoring efforts that year, including games of 35 and 32 and a pair of 31-pointers in a 2-0 finals sweep of SJCS, which was then bannered by Lo and then-rookie Ligad.
Just how explosive and dominant was Jeric Teng in his farewell MMTLBA campaign? The lowest output produced by the eldest son of Philippine Basketball Association alum Alvin “Robocop” Teng was 27 points against Uno High School.
The first TL player to collect at least 50 points twice in the same season, Jeric also made 12 three-pointers in the game against Chiang Kai Shek College – an all-time MMTLBA record that remains unbroken until now.
Meanwhile, Jeric’s younger brother Jeron averaged a pedestrian 10.6 points in nine appearances as a HS rookie. Jeron upped his numbers in the finals with norms of 15 ppg and 10 rpg during the two-game finals.
The year before, as a seventh-grader, Jeron hit at a 34.1-point clip while powering Xavier School to the MMTLBA Aspirants crown with a lily-white 8-0 record.
In 2010, Jeron succeeded Jeric as MMTLBA scoring king, a distinction that the 6-foot-2 muscle-bound swingman would hold for three straight years until the completion of his HS eligibility in 2012.
A three-year XS teammate from 2010-12 was Kyles Lao, who joined Jeric and Jeron as a UAAP Rookie of the Year honoree this past campaign while carrying the colors of the winless UP Fighting Maroons.
In the past eight UAAP seasons, Xavier School has produced four ROY awardees – UP’s Woody Co (2006), Jeric Teng (2009), Jeron Teng (2012) and Kyles Lao (2013).