The Crying Game, Part 2?

PIDO Jarencio gave me a promise he’ll likely break tonight.

“Walang ng iyakan, sir (I’m done crying, sir),” he told me calmly when I got him by phone early Thursday morning. The quiet hours of the day seem to pull Pido away from pressures and people.

The night before, Jarencio had steered the University of Santo Tomas Tigers to a pulse-pounding 73-72 win over the La Salle Green Archers.

Another victory at Smart Araneta Coliseum tonight puts the coach and his team in the history books. They’d be the only fourth seed ever to capture the UAAP basketball championship.

If there’s a Cinderella in this year’s Big Dance, the Tigers are it. They defeated the top-ranked National University Bulldogs twice and rode the carriage to the ball with the emotional Pido taking the reins.

In the compelling theater of college basketball, the Santo Tomas mentor has played the key roles. He has donned the masks of joy and despair.

A hulking figure at 5 feet 10 and 200 pounds, the 50-year-old Jarencio cried unabashedly on national television when UST beat NU the second time to reach the finals.

He sported the widest of grins Wednesday when he outsmarted La Salle coach Juno Sauler to take Game 1 of their best-of-three championship series.

Jarencio claims to have slept like a baby Wednesday night.

Sure. He probably woke up every hour and wept.

What triggers the tears from Jarencio is now public knowledge. It’s the knocks his players have absorbed from injuries and ridicule on the road to the top.

There were snickers galore when UST was down and out. Look who’s snickering now.

With our hoops drama continuing to unfold, would there be a crying game, part 2, tonight should UST continue its unbelievable romp?

Jarencio left the door ajar when asked that question again.

“Di pa rin masabi, sir (I can’t say for sure sir),” he replied.

* * *

UST and La Salle are so evenly matched the coach who comes up with the more judicious adjustments should win tonight’s game.

The Tigers are great 45 percent of the time from the perimeter. The Archers are outstanding 44 percent from the inside.

“It will all boil down to strategy,” says Jarencio, who won his first UAAP basketball trophy as a rookie head coach on the España campus in 2006. “It will all depend on our individual talents.

While paying tribute to his mainstays like Kevin Ferrer, Jeric Teng, Karim Abdul, Ed Daquioag and Clark Bautista, Jarencio gave me a glimpse of the high-stakes world of college-ball recruitment.

A fancied player gets taken even before you get him to consider your basketball program, Jarencio says. “The usual recruiting grounds get covered by competing schools even before you get there.”

He is proud of his current players drafted from off the beaten path. “Who would think that the Chinese school leagues, long overlooked by recruiters, would yield talent that has helped our cause through the years?”

Among the Filipino-Chinese leaguers with UST are Paulo Pe, Kim Lu and Kent Lao.