It was the season of a tearjerker, of second chances. A cinematic drama is on fire at the tills, enchanting millions of star-struck moviegoers, and its stars, John Lloyd and Bea Alonzo, came to watch Game Two of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) title series.
The couple’s never-say-die spirit was summoned by fans, and it communed with them last Saturday. Up in the stands, a banner was held aloft by a sea of hands. “Thomasians sila Popoy at Basha. May Second Chance!” But it was another scribbled note, leaping out from a page of a Brothers Grimm tale, that froze the moment—and canonized him into a UAAP demigod: “Ferrer-est of them all!”
When the chips were low, Kevin Ferrer fired up the proud, unbowed Thomasians that packed their side of the gallery at the Smart Araneta Coliseum. They did not come to weep for another lost title dream and bury it. In fact, it was quite the opposite, and Ferrer, delivering a performance that will enchant long in college basketball’s treasured lore, would declare after the game, “Nasa isip ko lang: Ayokong umuwi nang luhaan [In my mind, I refused to go home weeping].”
Thousands instead wept tears of relief and rode home looking ahead not to the next season but to next Wednesday’s deciding game. The Growling Tigers of University of Santo Tomas (UST), defeated in Game One of the UAAP title series but not broken, turned to Ferrer to live for another day, for a second chance to wrap their arms around the UAAP silverware that has eluded them for nine years.
In Game Two of the best-of-three epic, Ferrer dazzled and sizzled and claimed hard-court immortality. He was incandescent in one quarter, when the Growling Tigers were playing catch-up ball, in a manner no other player in college basketball had lit up the court in decades. He sprayed 24 points in the third quarter of a pressure-racked game. Mind-blowing, it looked undoable, even statistically improbable. “Insane,” quipped a sports writer.
Ferrer poured out all that he has, drilling one impossible shot after another. The stretch began with two free throws, which gave him that electrifying sense that told him he was loaded. “I got my confidence,” Ferrer would later describe it. “I felt I had it going.”
He hit a triple after a Far Eastern University (FEU) miss and following another squandered FEU offensive, drilled in another. UST fans were on fire. The clock in the third quarter read 7:50. Only 130 seconds had passed, he had clustered eight points, and the rampant Growling Tigers were back in the game. After Mac Belo split his free throws for FEU, Karim Abdul fired a cross-court pass to Ferrer, who knocked in his third trey, pushing the Tigers on top for good, 32-31. In the UST stands, tumult erupted.
There was eternity of action left, and it was an eternity of magic from Ferrer’s hands. He pulled out and flicked bolts of fire several more times. Over the din one could almost hear the swish of the net as every shot he fired fell in as if guided by the hand of destiny, or by a microchip thrown in by the gods of UST basketball. He did not miss a shot until the quarter was well into its final two minutes and UST sitting on a 10-point spread, 47-37.
Igniting that improbable rally, Ferrer turned back an entire horde of hungry Tamaraws out to celebrate their anticipated return to the UAAP summit. Not only that. He scored more in 10 minutes than the Growling Tigers had for the entire first half. Nothing in either UAAP or National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball that I’ve seen in my whole sportswriting career was a more mesmerizing performance, and the circumstances made it all the more so.
It was, he said softly, “muscle memory,” playing down, unsuccessfully, its significance. He had been practicing those shots in training, he added. “Ayun, lumabas ngayon.”
Looking at the spectacle another way, on the brink of defeat, UST exploded. On the cusp of its first UAAP title since 2006, FEU collapsed. The contrast between the two Mike Tolomia, another of those veritable sparks of FEU’s dreaded offense, supplied in sharper detail. More overeager than deliberate in his team’s most important game of the season, he made poor shot selection one after another, and was inevitably throwing bricks. He launched 15 mostly long attempts, and had 15 misses.
It made sense that these Growling Tigers were not a one-dimensional team, as well. Standing out just as prominently was their pressure defense on the Tamaraws. Imagine an offense that all season long scored in the high 70s and averaged 74 points per game. Last Saturday the Tams didn’t even breach the 60-point wall. They came up four points short, held down to a 27-percent shooting by a defense that refused to be cowed by Roger Pogoy’s fine streak of three-point shooting and Prince Orizu’s hot hands that were evident in Game One.
FEU Coach Nash Racela constantly paced the court like a peripatetic father expecting his first-born. He held a psychological edge, but acted as if it was his opposite number, Bong de la Cruz, that had it, not him.
“The game was close, we had a chance in the endgame,” he said. That 27-percent clipped unhinged him, not to mention that his boys missed 15 free throws in a game they lost by six points. Pogoy, was a nonfactor in the final half.
How Racela will fight back will be interesting to see. Now UST has a second chance at the title. For FEU, a second lost opportunity?