DE LA Salle University downed University of Santo Tomas to romp away with the men’s seniors crown in the 2013 University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) basketball competitions.
With a little bit of luck, the Taft Avenue-based school also grabbed the women’s collegiate championship after Far Eastern University, which appeared headed to a third consecutive title (including a 16-0 sweep in 2012), was forced to give up five victories during the double-round elimination phase due to player ineligibility violations and failed to advance to the Final Four playoffs.
Vangie Soriano was ruled ineligible for playing in a commercial league during the UAAP season. With the configuration of the women’s team standings, National University and De La Salle University finished the elims with identical 12-2 records, and the University of Santo Tomas and Adamson University each wound up with an 8-6 ledger.
FEU was relegated to fifth place at 7-7. NU beat La Salle for the top seed in a tiebreaker (the two teams split their head-to-head matchups with NU winning by nine points in the first round and La Salle taking the second with an eight-point margin) and UST edged Adamson for the third seed also via a tiebreaker.
In the Final Four, the DLSU Lady Archers made short work of the UST Lady Tigresses with a come-from-behind overtime win while the NU Lady Bulldogs were extended to a rubber match by Adamson before ousting the feisty Lady Falcons to reach the finals for the first time in school history against last year’s losing finalist, La Salle.
In the finals, La Salle took the series opener, 72-48, but NU bounced back to capture the second game, 67-52. In the deciding Game Three, the Lady Archers grabbed their first UAAP title since their “four-peat” feat from 1999 to 2002 with a 69-61 triumph. La Salle’s three-point artist Trisha Piatos was named the Finals MVP.
In men’s basketball, the UST Growling Tigers beat the DLSU Green Archers to become the fifth team in the Final Four era (beginning 1994) to snare the men’s diadem in three games after overcoming a 0-1 deficit in the beat-of-three finals.
Significantly four of the previous 0-1 comebacks were registered either by UST – in 1994 and 1995 – or La Salle – in 1999 – all against each other.
Before this season, it was UST that last turned in the trick. In 2006, the Growling Tigers defeated Ateneo de Manila University, 2-1, in the finals while their top bench tactician Pido Jarencio joined an elite group of head coaches that won the title in their UAAP debut.
Poker-faced Juno Sauler, DLSU’s rookie mentor, followed Jarencio on the list this year. It was an uphill climb to the top by the Green Archers in Season 76.
At the end of the first round of the eight-school competitions, the team was mired at the bottom of the win-loss standings with a fifth-to-seventh-places deadlock along with Adamson University and Ateneo at 3-4.
The Green, however, completed the second round with an unblemished 7-0 mark, knocked off league Most Valuable Player Terrence Romeo and Far Eastern University to secure the No. 2 seed behind top seed National University, and then knocked off the Tamaraws for a second time in their Final Four duel to stretch its winning streak to nine games and reach the UAAP finals for the first time since 2008.
During the three-game finals between La Salle and UST, an overall 67,258 spectators trooped to the Araneta Coliseum for Games One (20,525) and Two (23,037) and to the Mall of Asia Arena in the decisive third game where a two-year arena attendance record of 23,696 was established.
Much-heralded Jeron Teng, the Green Archers’ 6-foot-2 sophomore swingman, stepped up during the titular series, averaging 19.7 points, 8.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 1.67 steals and 0.67 blocked shots an outing to earn Finals MVP honors.
Teng previously held the all-time high school scoring record in Philippine basketball history when he chalked up 104 points in Xavier School’s 164-74 shellacking of Grace Christian College in a Metro Manila Tiong Lian Basketball Association game on January 5, 2011.
A 16-year-old junior at the time, Teng became the first HS player ever to reach the 100-point plateau. Last week, AMA University’s high school standout Clark Quijano torched Lord’s Grace Christian School for an eye-popping 120 points in a 166-85 victory in the 7th Mariano Bondoc Cup tournament at the Hope Christian Academy gym in Fairview, Quezon City.
The 6-foot Quijano already had 100 points for the Junior Titans by HALFTIME – 59 in the first quarter and 41 in the second. He added another 20 markers in the third quarter.
It was the highest-scoring game by a high school player in local basketball annals, surpassing Teng’s 104-pointer in less than three years.
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