THE Final Four roster for the 2013 Philippine Collegiate Champions League has been determined. And as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, a different champion will be crowned.
Making up the four-team semifinal cast are the De La Salle University Green Archers, the reigning University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) champions; the San Beda Red Lions, the “four-peat” titlists from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); the Southwestern University Cobras, the winner of the Southern Islands qualifier from Cebu; and Far Eastern University Tamaraws, the winner of the Luzon-Metro Manila qualifier.
The round-robin Final Four phase will unwrap on Monday at the Blue Eagle Gym (it was named Loyola Center during the 1960s and 1970s) in Ateneo’s Katipunan, Quezon City campus.
In the first game (2 p.m.), it will be La Salle against SWU. And in the mainer (4 p.m.), it will be San Beda against FEU.
Under a PCCL rule that was instituted last year, the teams that captured the UAAP and NCAA competitions were automatically given Final Four berths.
La Salle overcame a 0-1 deficit in the best-of-three UAAP finals to beat the University of Santo Tomas in three games for its first league title since 2007.
San Beda downed Colegio de San Juan de Letran, 2-1, in their NCAA titular duel for its fourth consecutive crown and seventh in eight seasons.
In an all-UAAP affair, FEU blew a 21-point third-quarter advantage but hung on to dethrone 2012 PCCL titlist UST, 71-68, in the finals of the Luzon-Metro Manila qualifying segment.
During the qualifier’s semifinals, the Tamaraws ousted the National University Bulldogs, 88-70, in what could be two-time UAAP MVP Bobby Parks’ farewell game in an NU uniform and Eric Altamirano’s final assignment as Bulldogs bench boss, and the UST Growling Tigers crushed the Letran Knights, 77-60, in a battle of second-placers from the UAAP and NCAA, respectively.
FEU played without backcourt stars Ryan Roose (RR) Garcia and Terrence Romeo, who have moved up to the professional ranks with Global Port in the Philippine Basketball Association.
UST, on the other hand, lost Jeric Teng to the pros and missed the services of Aljon Mariano, who recently underwent knee surgery.
In the Final Four, FEU will also be without Reymark Belo, who along with UST’s Kevin Ferrer, will shortly join the rest of the members of the Philippine national men’s basketball team to the Southeast Asian Games in Myanmar (formerly Burma) where the country is the reigning gold medalist.
Southwestern University exacted revenge against the University of the Visayas, its fiercest nemesis in the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (CESAFI), with a convincing 68-60 victory over the Green Lancers in the PCCL’s Southern Islands championship game.
Last October, UV dethroned SWU, 3-2, during the best-of-five CESAFI finals in one of the biggest comebacks – if not the biggest – in Cebu collegiate history.
The Cobras had been 14-0 in the seven-school tournament, including a 2-0 lead over UV in the finals and 5-0 overall against the same team, when a major disaster struck.
UV steadily turned the tables around with three straight victories – a come-from-behind, double-overtime 89-82 win in Game Three, a 71-66 success in Game Four and finally, a 64-62 thriller in the decisive Game Five on burly Hernan (Wowie) Escosio’s putback with 0.7 of a second left as the Green Lancers became the first CESAFI team ever to pull off a historic title finish after trailing 0-2 in the final series.
The reigning CESAFI Most Valuable Player is SWU point guard Mark Jayven Tallo, who toiled with La Salle during the 2012 UAAP wars but flew the coop when he fell out of the Archers’ playmaking rotation with the emergence of then-rookie Thomas Torres that season.
Now the 5-foot-10 Tallo has a golden opportunity to show up his former team when SWU and La Salle meet on the opening playdate of this year’s PCCL Final Four, which is a single-round series to determine the top two teams that will slug it out in the best-of-three finals.
SWU is in the PCCL semifinals for the second year in a row. For San Beda, it will be a third straight trip to the Final Four, having finished third the past two years.
In 2012, UST went through the qualifiers before whipping Ateneo de Manila University (the Blue Eagles sat out this year’s games), 2-1, in the PCCL finals to secure the title for the first time ever.
A month before, the Blue Eagles had swept the Growling Tigers in the UAAP finals. In the series finale, Teng, who’s now plays for Rain or Shine in the PBA, knocked in five triples and 22 points to catapult UST to an 81-76 success and earned MVP honors in the process.
The San Beda Red Lions beat the Southwestern University Cobras, 64-56, to rank third.