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Ray Roquero
Ghost of 2014 haunts Chot
CHOT REYES has been walking around these past few months in shoes, perhaps, too big for him to fill. They belonged formerly to Tab Baldwin, the immediate past national team coach.
Greatness revisited
OVER the holidays I wrote about the impending demise of the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex (RMSC). It does not have a chance against the onslaught of progress.
Senator, world champion, Sir!
GILAS Pilipinas’s bid for the Olympics crashed, adding yet to the 44-year misery of basketball fans pining to see Filipino dribbles in Olympic basketball.
Vision to preserve Rizal Memorial
OVER the past few days an online petition, “Save Rizal Memorial Sports Complex,” has been gathering slow fire among conservationists, sports fans and plain history buffs.
A paean to a dying ‘old Rizal’
SO the demise of the old sports complex—Rizal Memorial—is sealed.
Glory regained for Archers
IN the billowing sea of blue fans in the gallery, white cardboard signs were thrust defiantly in the air. They assaulted the heavens with a prayer scrawled in blue handwriting: “We Believe.”
FEU: The spoiler?
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.
No title romp for DLSU
There was a bump on the road in the Green Archers’ march to the finals—and now, what had earlier looked inevitable in their quest of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) season crown could turn out to be a disastrous fall for the suddenly mortal Taft Avenue warriors.
Archers-Eagles redux in UAAP
DE LA SALLE vs. Ateneo in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) finals?
Bad news in the UAAP
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.
Doing a Trump in the (PO)C?
“Trump Triumphs.” This was the headline of the New York Times, bastion of the Eastern Establishment, the morning after American politics went through a seismic change.
Senator-world champion, Sir!
THE great world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, reminiscing about the legendary “Thrilla in Manila” in 1974 years later, told the writer Mark Kram: “We went to Manila as champions, Joe [Frazier] and me, and we came back as old men.”
Make mine Pacquiao
AND so the man Filipino fight fans adore next to no one as their greatest sports hero is climbing the ring again. He is coming back from the shortest retirement from the ring ever, nearly seven months to the day he vowed never to throw again a punch in a pro fight.
Saving PHL sports from Peping
It’s time Filipinos rise up from their Rip van Winkle-like slumber and ask: Why should Jose “Peping” Cojuangco get another four years to run Philippine sports? What collective sins have we accumulated as a people to deserve his leadership?
Belo: Blackwater’s savior
MANY months ago, when Kiefer Ravena’s talent miserably failed to deliver the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) crown to Ateneo and Kevin Ferrer’s three-point shooting fell short in handing University Santo Tomas (UST) the crown during the Season 77 best-of-three title series, it was a lesser star—but and probably a bigger talent—that came through and crowned Far Eastern king of varsity basketball.
Ginebra: Turning back the clock
THE fury of the Ginebra-Meralco title series has overwhelmed Typhoon Karen’s threatening winds and rains.
Narvasa bleeds for refs–not fans
THE collective eruption of expletives from Ginebra fans, when referees Rommel Gruta and Edward Aquino did not call two flagrant violations in the dying seconds of the Ginebra-Globalport elimination match, could have shaken the Mall of Asia Arena to its foundations.
How to ease a hangover
Curry: Best of the best
Is he a mirage? Is he one of a kind? Is he the future do-it-all in basketball? Small, shifty, highly skilled, deadly, uncatchable, unstoppable, unbreakable. After Jordan, after LeBron, the greatest wonder kid of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Steph Curry is doing it all on the court—mesmerizing, spectacular. This column was written a week ago, but I lost it to a computer glitch. Not irretrievably, it turned out. I have recovered nearly all of it. A week-old story can do justice to a timeless icon.
Of ‘monsters’
Mac Belo: True grit
‘A Second Chance!’
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.
UAAP: A dash of magic
IT was a title showdown between two great rivals and two storied schools that was 36 years in the making. on Wednesday when they—the top-seed Growling Tigers of University of Santo Tomas (UST) and the second-ranked Tamaraws of Far Eastern University (FEU)—came to blows again, the hard court shook and trembled under their feet, and the ground cracked and buckled.
Narvasa and Joe Lipa
I HAVE nothing but respect for Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Commissioner Chito Narvasa. There is nothing I would have wished for him but smooth sailing in a league that enjoys popularity with fans on a scale so staggering when viewed from the perspective of four decades.