A lot of fourth-quarter free throws, a lot of rebounding—and a lot of Raymar Jose all came into play in the fourth quarter on Saturday, as if guided by the hand of destiny, as Far Eastern University’s (FEU) Tamaraws pulled off a cliff-hanger and lived to fight another day.
Until they were obliterated in a game they were conceded to win, the Ateneo Blue Eagles had never lost to the Tams this season and had never dropped a single game of their last six outings.
They only needed to win this one to forge a dream showdown for the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) crown with the first finalist, the La Salle Green Archers. Instead, the Eagles will have to fight for their lives, forced to go through a sudden-death on Wednesday with their confidence badly shaken.
Losing their most important game of the season, they were stunned, if not shell-shocked, to discover their own mortality in the fourth quarter. Against the Tamaraws’ 1-3-1 and 2-3 zones, they could not shoot the ball, their guns falling silent like it was Armistice Day in the final 4:11 after an early dash of bravado opening the fourth quarter.
That was when Aaron Black, showing his hard-court pedigree, went on a spree of seven points to build a 10-point Blue Eagles spread, 49-39. But from the eighth-minute mark, it was downhill for them. Although they still kept at bay their relentless foes, who started crashing the boards and killing them off the rebounds, from 54-49, the Eagles could not buy another basket until the game wound down to its last five seconds of play.
Only five seconds to try to trim a 60-55 deficit. Thirdy Ravena struck for a three-pointer, but after an FEU timeout, Ron Dennison iced the game from the charity line, 62-58. He made the 11th and 12th free throws of the eye-popping 15 that were awarded to the Tams in the fourth canto, a huge bonanza from Ateneo’s early penalty situation. Ravena beat the buzzer with a long trey, but time ran out on Coach Tab Baldwin.
“We ended up taking 36 threes in the game,” a rueful Baldwin said. “That’s way too many and that’s exactly what they [Tamaraws] wanted to force us to do and that number went in their favor tonight.”
He could not pluck another miracle from the bench, but he badly needs one on Wednesday to contain the high-spirited, determined and never-say-die Jose, the irrepressible Tamaraw with a monster game.
But if Jose would be sensational off the boards and in scoring the way he was incandescent on both ends of the court on Saturday night, the Blue Eagles would be in the crosshairs of the defending champions.
It is an understatement that Jose did everything to win it for FEU. When everything seemed to fall apart for his team, he willed it back into the game, refusing to “go gently into that good night.” Although limited to seven points in the first half, he produced a terrific 13 in the second for a game-high 20 points.
Fighting back from a dismal first half, when FEU conceded as many as 14 second-chance points to Ateneo, Jose made sure to reverse the trend. He was a tower of power in the literal and metaphorical sense in the second half, when he plucked down 17 rebounds, almost putting to shame the entire Ateneo team that produced 18 boards. With six rebounds in the first half, Jose tallied 23 boards. That was almost half of FEU’s 50-40 rebounding edge over Ateneo.
It was a career night for him. He played almost the entire second half, and when the Tams sued for time in the final five seconds, someone iced his left aching shoulder. It revived memories of a nearly exhausted Mac Bello, hero of FEU’s titanic title duel with the University of Santo Tomas Growling Tigers in last year’s UAAP championship series.
“Ayaw ko pong magbakasyon,” the terrific left-hander said. “Kahit anong mangyari, lalaban kami.”
It was reported that he had harangued his team in the dugout during the half-time break. What he told his teammates was similar to what he said on camera: don’t be selfish, and play and fight as a team.
Moments after the victory he gathered his teammates in a huddle at midcourt for a final reminder. FEU Coach Nash Racela hustled to the court to catch the ritual. Deconstructing the game afterward, Racela said they never gave up even in the face of what he called “questionable calls”. The team momentarily lost focus and was committing mistakes. Everything was going against the Tams until Jose stiffened their resolve.
They had pulled off a huge confidence-builder; now they have the momentum to go for the jugular.