There is disturbing news from the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP)
seniors basketball championship, and it has nothing to do anymore about brawls between rival schools and the intense heckling between their rabid fans.
It is the spectacle down on the hard court, and it hits at the very core of how the games would be played in the championship round: the inconsistency of officiating by the referees.
Inconsistency is a bad word when a team blows hot and cold, especially in a game when its fortunes hang on it, but to describe refereeing as inconsistent is doubtless terrible. An excellent team could play its heart out—but still lose the game when the referees’ calls go the other way.
“Breaks of the game,” is a phrase that less irate coaches would describe it.
But don’t tell that to a partisan fan, don’t make that an excuse to Coach Nash Racela of the Far Eastern University (FEU) Tamaraws, who lost to the streaking De La Salle Green Archers on November 12, after seizing control of the game early on.
It was a dogfight of a contest highlighted by Ben Mbala’s 16 points and 16 rebounds for La Salle. The Archers tied it on Aljun Melecio’s triple, 67-all, and secured the win on Jeron Teng’s late heroics to close out the double-round elims on 13 wins and one loss, best in the tournament.
One nonpartisan observer, though, swears the referees lost control “between the second and third periods” when they changed how they called the game.
The Tamaraws’ big man, Prince Orizu, picked up three early fouls in the first half and his fourth in the final quarter. Although up by eight in the third quarter, Racela’s boys couldn’t keep up with their pace, and could have used Orizu’s physical game down the stretch against seemingly unstoppable Mbala, La Salle’s prized big man.
But to the Green Archers’ Coach Aldin Ayo, the Tamaraws were close to killing Mbala in trying to hold him down, and still the referees seemed blind to the chops and blows on his arms and body. The non-calls in the first half sparked an unusual spectacle at the half: a huddle between the two teams with the officiating crew at center court.
Ayo said he was pissed off at the conversation over a comment by one of the refs, which ran this way: “Coach, pag hindi na namin kinaya, tatawagan na namin.”
Did it mean the referees had a higher degree of tolerance at the “physicality” of the Tamaraws’ fouls on Mbala? That was how it looked to Ayo, who was at loss about what kind of hard foul would be called when the Tamaraws ganged up on a powerful, strong player like Mbala.
“Sabi ko sa refs, patayin na lang nila si Ben eh…. Malakas ang katawan nito. Ang gusto nila malakas din na foul para tumawag ng foul,” he said.
His line of reasoning is this: a foul is a foul, whether a strong player goes down or not. Don’t wait for his man to fall. That’s the kind of officiating consistency that Ayo wanted, regardless of whether the fouled player was weak or strong.
So the tenor of the calls noticeably changed in the third quarter, and it was Racela’s turn to complain. He could not be in the half-court huddle. But after emerging from the dugout, he talked to his FEU coaching assistant, Eric Gonzales, and learned that the refs had “wanted to adjust” in the second half.
He raised what could be considered the question that hovered over the game—and will hang like a dark cloud over the seniors’ tournament as it enters the Final Four phase. “You can’t be consistent if you differ from the first half,” Racela fumed.
That’s bad news for a league that has the biggest following of any collegiate league in the country. Inconsistency in big-league officiating, changing the flow of the game, and altering the fortunes of the protagonists, would be unfair to the teams and certainly to basketball fans.
The injustice done to one team kills the very essence of the championship. The UAAP should crack the whip on game officials—soon.
***
It has been a weekend like any other in recent months.
One of the most recognizable voices of Philippine sports on radio and television has been stilled. Ronnie Nathanielz, the transplant from Sri Lanka, has passed on.
Granted Filipino citizenship in 1973 by President Ferdinand Marcos through a presidential decree, Ronnie brought an excellent brand of sports journalism to his adopted country that was distinctly his own voice—well-informed and witty, sometimes in rapid-fire fashion, unmistakable for that accent from the Indian subcontinent.
Our condolences to his family. He will be buried in his adopted country. Good-bye, Ronnie.