THE UAAP Final Four lived up to the form charts and hype last weekend, but there’s no denying University of Santo Tomas will go into the best-of-three championship series against Far Eastern University starting this Wednesday the outstanding favorite.
The Tigers, the No. 1 seed in the eliminations, masterfully bundled out the defending champion National University Bulldogs, 62-55, yesterday to gain a crack at their first championship since 2006 while reversing the trend the last two years of the top qualifier flunking the semifinal test.
The Tamaraws returned to the championship stage for the second straight year only through a buzzer-beating putback that eliminated the hard-fighting Ateneo Eagles, 76-74, a day earlier.
Enjoying a twice-to-beat advantage in the Final Four like the Tigers as the No. 2 semifinalist, the Tams seemed on the verge of cracking up as the Eagles rallied from as many as nine points down to lead at 74-71 before Roger Pogoy hit a triple and Mac Belo scored on a followup of a Mike Tolomia miss as FEU escaped by the skin of its teeth.
After Pogoy’s three-pointer for 74-all, the Eagles had two chances to pull it out. But Ateneo’s top star Kiefer Ravena, crowned MVP for the second straight year, lost the ball while trying to find room to get off a tiebreaking shot.
Then after an FEU turnover, Adrian Wong, who emerged as the unexpected scoring partner of Ravena down the stretch, bungled a fast-break layup under heavy pressure. The miss paved the way for FEU’s game-winner.
The third straight loss from FEU this season extended the misery of the Eagles, who blew two chances in the Final Four last year as top qualifier to the Bulldogs, who went on to go all the way with a double conquest of the Tams.
NU is out of the way this time, but FEU now finds itself against a hungry UST squad that it has yet to conquer so far.
The Tigers showed their determination to crush the Bulldogs right off the reel by rampaging to a 15-2 lead then stretched their advantage to 48-32 in the third quarter. Although boasting of the steady Kevin Ferrer and Karim Abdul, the Tigers found another deadly hand in Louie Vigil, who sizzled with 19 points on top of 11 rebounds and seven assists.
It will be the first title meeting for the Tigers and the Tams since 1979. FEU won its last last championship on 2005 before UST prevailed the following year.
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After twice losing their way in the endgame, the NLEX Road Warriors finally finished strong in their most scintillating conquest in the Philippine Cup so far.
Jonas Villanueva fired back-to-back triples to spark an 11-7 closing burst, new recruit Sean Anthony unloaded a career-high 32 points and the aging man-mountain Asi Taulava had 18 points and 18 rebounds as the Road Warriors ran over their highly favored and sister team Talk ‘N Text, 107-101.
Meanwhile, Arwind Santos scored with 0.6 seconds left as defending champion San Miguel Beer hacked out a 106-105 decision over Barako Bull to move ahead of the tight pack with a 5-1 win-loss record.
Rain or Shine earlier improved to 4-1 along with Alaska even as Meralco finally ended its losing woes in six games. The Elasto Painters downed Blackwater, 103-81, while the Aces outplayed GlobalPort, 123-104, with eight players finishing in double figures. Gary David, who set a season-high 40 points two weeks ago, delivered 11 points in the stretch to finish with 26 as the Bolts shocked the Star Hotshots, 87-83.
The struggling Barangay Ginebra Gin Kings evaded becoming the pro league’s laughing stock at the close of cage action last week by rallying hard to beat the lowly Mahindra Enforcers, 80-76.
Mahindra shares the cellar at 1-5 with Meralco, whose earlier 89-64 loss to Ginebra remained as the best winning effort the Gin Kings so far.