Let the PCCL Games Begin...

• The FEU Tamaraws started out on a good note as they defeated the AU Chiefs, 79-69 in the first game of the 2009 edition of the PCCL. It was a game of runs as FEU couldn't take the Chiefs totally out of the game. The Tams led as much as 14 in the 1st half but the Chiefs came as close as 1 in the 3rd quarter. In the end, AU just did not have enough weapons against a very talented Tams team. The AU Chiefs just could not manufacture any points in the half court and were dependent on their transition play. I did not see any set plays at all. The Chiefs were relegated on giving the ball to Gio Ciriacruz and hoping that he could muster enough points to get a W. On the defensive end, the Chiefs settled for different variations of the zone defense. The zone defense was effective at times as it prevented the Tamaraws from attacking the basket but it wasn't able to stop the outside shooting of the Tams. Coach Glen Capacio's boys moved that ball with so much patience and it resulted to good quality shots. Paul Sanga and RR Garcia knocked down 2 3-pointers a piece in the second half when the Chiefs were employing the zone defense. Both JR Cawaling and Aldrech Ramos played in the game despite their commitment to Smart-Gilas. Ramos was his normal self getting rebounds and scoring on inside incursions. JR Cawaling still looked passive. He was passed good looks and it resulted to a couple of TOs. I know he's trying to be a leader by setting his teammates but FEU needs him take over the reigns of Mark Barroca and he needs to be a little bit more aggressive. RR Garcia surely is not suffering from the absence of Barroca as he scored 17 points and blocked 3 shots.
• In the second game dubbed as a catfight, the San Beda Red Lions proved to be too much for the SSC-R de Cavite Baycats as they blew the Baycats out of the gym 91-50. The Baycats were known to be a run-and-gun team but so are the Lions. The Lions definitely took the Baycats to school on how to run fastbreaks as they got multiple opportunities for wide open lay-ups in the open court. The Baycats were trying their luck from the outside all game long but only couple of their attempts connected. The Lions also imposed their authority inside as they used their height advantage to get easy and multiple looks inside the paint. Bam-Bam Gamalinda finished with 18 points, 12 rebounds and 5 assists. He still missed a couple of open jumpers but I'm pretty sure this was how Coach Frankie Lim envisioned him to play back in the NCAA. He was just barely a factor in last couple of games in the eliminations up to the NCAA Finals. But hey, he still has a chance to prove his worth in the PCCL. The Lions also played minus Jay-R Taganas, Dave Marcelo, Chico Tirona and Borgie Hermida but they did not need them in this game.
• Both SBC and FEU will now advance to the Elite 8. SBC will face the winner in the UV-Mapua game while FEU will await the winner of the UE-UC game.
  
• The next games will be on Wednesday. DLSU Green Archers will face off with CSJL Knights in a very exciting match at 2PM while the ADMU Blue Eagles square off with the Lyceum Pirates. The DLSU-CSJL game will most likely be a treat to watch but I can't say the same for the ADMU-Lyceum game. What is up with the PCCL management scheduling the better games at 2PM? Really ADMU-Lyceum and SBC- SSC-R de Cavite at 4PM? And DLSU-CSJL at 2PM? WTH.
  

Ball Points (11-16-2009)

• As expected, the DLSU Green Archers have booked the final ticket to the PCCL Sweet 16. ADMU, UE, FEU, UST, SSC-R, SBC, JRU, CSJL have also booked seats in the Sweet 16 for advancing to the Final 4 in their respective leagues. The UV Green Lancers have also qualified for winning the latest edition of CESAFI. Contrary to what I predicted, it was the SSC-R Cavite Baycats who advanced by beating out the Adamson Univeristy in their zonal qualifier for having a better quotient. Other teams that have adavnced through their zonal qualifiers are University of Cebu, Mapua, Arellano U, University of Manila and University of San Carlos. The league is set to start on November 23 and will be broadcasted at Studio 23. My early bet is the FEU Tamaraws. That is if the Gilas boys, JR Cawaling and Aldrech Ramos, will play in the tournament. If not, look for DLSU Green Archers and SSC-R Golden Stags to make some noise. Still, we can not count out teams like ADMU, UC or UV. ADMU still has one of the better coaches in the collegiate ranks in Norman Black. They might not use veterans Nonoy Baclao, Rabeh Al-Hussaini and Jai Reyes but they are still a very talented team.
• The RP Patriots have notched their 4th win in the ABL as they defeated the KL Dragons in the Dragons' home court 73-63. This is the Patriots' 3rd straight win since Nonoy Baclao and Elmer Espiritu have been included in the lineup. Looks like the defense of the former UAAP stars is just what the doctor ordered for the Patriots.
• There are some rumblings that Emeka Okafor might be on the move once again. There isn't anything imminent and there have been only discussions. If the deal does push through, that would mean that NO Hornets might be entering into rebuilding mode. They recently fired Byron Scott due to the horrendous 3-8 start and replaced him with GM Jeff Brower. I don't like this move at all. Scott is a good a coach and I believe he's being used as a scapegoat. Whenever you're paying $14M to a shooter who is currently shooting 38% from the field, you can't expect to win a lot of games. I actually like the Okafor-for-Chandler swap as it gives them another guy who can create shots for himself but its has not translated into more wins. They're already 3rd to the last in the Western Conference with Chris Paul and now that he will be out for 3-4 weeks. That might result to their burial in the Western Conference. CP3 might not come back in time to save their season and it might prompt management to start rebuilding. If they do decide to rebuild, I'm pretty sure CP3 will not want any part of it. Right now, I think they just have to be patient. Find a coach who can work with their star PG and get a guy who can create off the dribble and shoot. The Golden State Warriors have stars who want out in Monta Ellis and Stephen Jackson and the Hornets might want to start calling up Don Nelson about those guys. It will hard for them to upgrade their current roster though as they hardly have any assets. They're stuck with the 2 years and $29M on Peja's contract. The most sizeable expiring contract they have is Hilton Armstrong's $2.8M deal. The only young player that other teams might have any interest is Julian Wright and he has not been productive at all. The Hornets were considered contenders in 2007 but they fell short to the SA Spurs. Last year, there were a lot of expectations for the team but they did not even get past the 1st round with only the 7th seed in the Western Conference to show. 2007 was a fluke? Maybe. But Peja and Tyson Chandler were still productive in 2007. Maybe you can partly attribute their success in 2007 to the fact that not a single team was ready for them. Hurricane Katrina might have also motivated them to play extra hard. Fluke? Sort of. But I still believe they can still get out of their current situation but they they will have to be extra creative now.
• What about the LA Lakers losing 2 straight after the Boston Celtics lost 2 straight. The Rockets beat the Lakers in their home court today behind Aaron Brooks 33 points and Kobe Bryant's 5-20 shooting. Kobe is shooting 34% shooting in his last 2 games and the woeful shooting could be blamed to his groin injury. He has said that he will be resting his groin but don't expect him to sit out games. Aaron's domination justifies the fact that the Lakers can not guard guard quick point guards. Jordan Farmer will have to show up sooner rather later if the Lakers still intend to defend their championship. I guess the possibility of a 70-win team is dwindling down. Maybe we should stop dreaming the feat accomplished by Chicago Bulls in 1995-96 will be done again.

Count them out and they'll prove you wrong..

• UE books the final ticket to this year's UAAP finals with a very impressive 78-72 victory over this year's host, the FEU Tamaraws.
• A lot of people (including me) predicted an ADMU - FEU finals this year in the UAAP and I guess we all had good reasons to believe so. The Eagles are the defending champions and they only lost one starter and a couple of role players. (Chris Tiu, Mike Baldos, Yuri Escueta, Jobe who?) Then there's the ever dependable Norman Black who always finds a way to discipline his large-headed players to play basketball the right way. FEU did lose a lot of key players like Fernandez and Baracael but their talent and depth was undeniable. Andy Barroca made a lot of noise in the off-season with his stints with Oracle and Smart-Gilas and he was also joined by his teammates Ramos and Cawaling in Smart-Gilas. Guys like Cervantes, Sanga and Knuttel were also coming back to help FEU get a crown. Of course they were also able to recruit a couple of quality players in RR Garcia and Pipo Noundou. Unfortunately for FEU, you still had to play the games to win a championship
• UE has always been in the Final 4 in recent years but have yet to translate those F4 appearances to a UAAP crown. The past UE teams have crumbled under pressure from the time of coach Boyzie Zamar , James Yap and Ronald Tubid up to the time of coach Dindo Pumaren, Mark Borboran and Marcy Arellano. This year, no one was giving them shit and maybe that's how they like it. No pressure. No expectations. Just plain old basketball. As the game's commentators said UE was the hungrier team.
• UE was undeniably the dark horse of this season. The core of the team was coming off a successful PBL season under Lawrence Chongson and it ultimately lead to his hiring as UE's head coach when Dindo called it quits. This guy pressed the right button when he freed up the offense and allowed the players to just play . When you place your players in a free-wheeling system , you're going to give your players control of what the team is going to do on the floor. In order to be successful in this system , you need players who are smart and creative enough to make their own decisions on the floor. Chongson has one damn good one. Paul Lee. In a restricted system like FEU's, the coach is responsible for placing his players in a position where they can be great. Players like Carmelo Anthony, JR Cawaling and Reil Cervantes are great fits in this system as they need the ball in particular spots to be productive. The same can't be said with players like Derrick Rose, RR Garica and Barroca as what makes them good is their creativity and their ability to make the right decisions on their own. I'm not saying Capacio's a bad coach. In fact I like him for his emphasis on defense and his discipline but you have to adjust to the players you have. You can't treat every player the same way. You can't ask Yao Ming to come off screens and spot up for a 3 point shot. (Maybe you can, the big does have a soft touch.)You need a system that will utilize the talent of each of your players.
• The game started out fantastic. The two teams combined for only 4 TO's in the 1st half. The 2nd half was a different story as FEU stacked up their turnovers that eventually caused them the game. It was a game of runs like the ADMU-FEU game. Whenever FEU would build a double-digit lead, UE would respond with their own run and like the ADMU-FEU game, FEU couldn't execute at the end.
• Where did JR Cawaling go? This guy is so damn gifted but he finds a way to magically disappear. He was a beast in the first half. I was already rejoicing when their captain finally showed up. Little did I know, he was planning an escape plan. His aggressiveness was nowhere to be found in crunch time and he let his teammates down once again. Hey! Why isn't he off the team yet?!
• Noundou had a decent game but he took so many ill-advised jump shots. He was so successful driving down the lane and stopping for a close ranged shot in the 1st half and continuing that might have changed the result. I wonder why he settled for outside shots (even 3 point attempts), which he missed most of them, when Cervantes was being guarded by Paul Lee on the block. Credit him for playing his heart out despite the injury.
• When Cervantes did get the ball at the block against Lee, he couldn't take advantage of the situation 100% of the time. This guy needs to develop a better post game either facing up or backing down and stop taking turn around jump shots. His partner Aldrech Ramos also missed a couple of open shots which he normally converts. RR Garcia's poise went down the drain. His lack of experience was evident in the game. I also didn't see Sanga in the game. Wonder where he went. I think he joined JR on his early vacation. Game-fixing? Kick them out as well FEU!
• Espiritu was non-existent offensively but he did change a lot of shots and blocked a few ones as well. Llagas moves so well in the shaded area and his teammates are so good in giving him the ball at the right spots. Rudy Lingganay gave his team a big boost with 15 points and his poise in the end game. Acuna showed the complete arsenal in this game. He mixed it up with 3 point shots and amazing drives and totaled 17 points in the game. Lee? Nothing else should be said about this stud. This guy threw a couple of questionable shots in this game but he did make some them including a couple of difficult threes. He wasn't the leading scorer in this one but he was certainly their main man. This guy is genuinely happy when his teammates makes incredible plays off his dishes. This guy was even tapping the number 6 patch (James Martinez) on his jersey at the end of the game. Just goes to show how unselfish he is.
• Schools are now aiming to win it all in the year that they are hosting but yet another host school failing to win the crown. Bad omen for the next year's host? (DLSU)
• These guys needs to improve on their FTs. Paul Lee missed 2 FTs at crunch time when they had a 76-72 lead with less than 2 minutes remaining. This is unforgivable for the team's best player. Good thing for him it didn't come back to haunt them.

Andy..Andy..Andy..

Why did it have to be Andy?...

Of course, you might have heard by now about probably the biggest news of the UAAP season 72. Andy Barroca quits the FEU basketball varsity team due to the allegations hurled at him. These accusations were based on his sub-par performances on the last 2 elimination games where he averaged 7.5 PPG and 3.5 TOPG and shot 33.33% from the field far from his season averages of 12.71 PPG, 2.57 TOPG and 44.58% FG. This was evident in the ADMU – FEU game last 9/12/2009 where he managed to score only 8 points. Apparently some of his teammates asked Coach Glen Capacio to take Andy out of the game because they were suspecting that he wasn’t playing to his abilities but another story says that only the team officials are accusing him and his agent said that his teammates do not believe the allegations threw against him. Personally, I don’t believe that Andy threw the ADMU game or any other games but I’ll admit it that my opinion is biased because I love Andy Barroca to death and I truly believe he will be a key part of Smart-Gilas’ campaign for 2012 Olympics. Plus it helps that he has an identical name with a beautiful girl. Now let’s try to evaluate whether or not Andy played to his ability in that ADMU game. In their game against ADMU, Coach Glen decided to tinker his starting lineup by placing Andy back at the point and putting Sanga at the 2 spot. The result? Andy scores all of his 8 points on that game courtesy of 4 made shots from the field against the lowly defense of Jai Reyes. A common denominator among all his 4 field goals, the play was set for him. Andy is the kind of player that needs to dominate the ball to be successful at the offensive end. As Rick Olivares said, Andy was so successful with Smart – Gilas and Oracle because he was given the ball and control of the offense. Of course this year in the UAAP, the point guard chores have been handed over to RR Garica and Andy had to slide to the 2 spot for the most part of the season. This means that he’ll have less control of the offense. Remember when Steve Francis played the 2 spot because Orlando wanted to give a young Jameer Nelson the break that he needed? Steve Francis struggled and it marked the start of the downfall of his career. Players are going to struggle if you won’t play them at the right position and if you’re not going to give them the role that is suitable for their talent (In this case Andy’s a scorer). But I don’t think you can blame Coach Glen on playing RR and Andy in the same backcourt. RR’s a heck of a player and he probably needs the ball more than Andy since Andy’s a better shooter and it makes sense to put a scorer on the shooting guard position.

Andy did commit a couple of mistakes in that game. He missed 2 FTs at the end of the 1^st half but even Steve Nash can miss 2 straight FTs. Now let’s move on to the 4^th quarter. Andy sort of took a back seat in their offense and was contented on just setting up the play and I guess he had good reason to do so since guys like Sanga and Ramos were on fire. Losing the 18 point lead wasn’t his entire fault but he did play a part. A play called for Andy to post up against Jai. He backed down against Jai and took a turnaround J. He missed the shot but it didn’t really matter because as how Mico Halili would put it “He was caught dancing with wrong pairs of shoes”. He reacted a little bit against the call but didn’t show much emotion while arguing against the referee but I don’t think he’s really an emotional player. He’s going to talk with the referees but he’s not a Sheed. The second play called for him was a curl with Reil setting up the screen for him. He was double –teamed but he still forced the shot against the defense of a Nonoy Baclao. This was clearly a bad decision on his part and he should’ve made the pass to a wide open Cervantes. Was this intentional? Maybe. Maybe not. A lot of players do force their shots not just Andy. He also committed 2 fouls that led to 4 FT attempts. One foul had him going for a steal. He had a clear chance to get the ball but shouldn’t have he just back off especially knowing that they were already in the penalty? The other foul was a silly frustration foul. A friend of mine said, “That’s why it’s called a frustration foul, he was frustrated”. He looked a little lax after the call but like I said he’s not really known to be an emotional player.

Based on my love for Andy and examining the game against ADMU, I’ll have to conclude that FEU made a mistake of accusing Andy of game-fixing and this might come back to bite them at their asses especially now that UE won last 9/19. Can’t the guy just have a bad game? He hasn’t been known to dominate in the UAAP despite his talent and besides this guy has been playing non-stop and maybe the guy’s just burned out. How come JR Cawaling (5.5 PPG and 4.5 TOPG in their last 2 elimination games plus a couple of stupid fancy pass attempts) or DLSU veterans (Barua, Mangahas, Malabes) are not accused of game fixing? There are always 2 sides of a story and maybe Barroca feared for his life and didn’t want to end up like Barracael. Throwing a simple basketball game is easier than being shot. Maybe a patron of ADMU gave him 20M to allow ADMU have an easier route to back-to-back championships and money does talk especially for a guy that comes from a poor family like Andy. Maybe he just had a bad game. I highly doubt that we’ll ever get the chance to know what really happened but I guess FEU did the right thing of releasing Barroca now that the mess has been made public because I can’t see Andy being comfortable playing again for FEU. A friend told me if Andy continues to play, he’s going to be cautious about every turnover and missed shot. At least, Noli still wants Andy to be the main man of Smart-Gilas despite the controversies.

Here’s a blog post coming from someone that has the connections to the FEU team and here is here official statement of FEU regarding the issue. (But you better have loud speakers to hear their crappy answers) Of course, Rick doesn’t believe Andy is guilty of the allegations and he’s got a lot of reasons to believe so but as jaemark said, he’s been known to be close to SBP guys and he might just be protecting Barroca especially now that Andy is already with Smart – Gilas.