No, this is not a premature Halloween entry :-p This is just me basking in the Blue Eagles' Game 1 victory. I do smell blood, because Ateneo has drawn first blood in the senior men's basketball finals and defeated La Salle, 69-61.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I was able to view the game online mere hours after it took place and what a game it was. The La Salle of old emerged early and its signature backcourt pressing defense challenged the Ateneo ball carriers for a while, but later on in the game this ceased to be a factor as the Blue Eagles kept their focus and fought their way through the press. The officiating was suspect as usual, but their efforts to make this a three-game series and keep Chris Tiu on the bench with foul trouble went for naught this time as Ryan Buenafe and Jai Reyes took up the scoring cudgels and chipped in 12 points apiece. Jai, Eric Salamat and Yuri Escueta also stepped up the defense and prevented JV Casio (20 pts) from scoring in crunchtime. La Salle's Bader Malabes hit a couple of treys if I'm not mistaken, but apart from him the offensive output of the Archers' relatively young backcourt was insignificant.

I also have to give props to Bacon Austria, Kirk Long and Mike Baldos for ably holding the fort when the starters had to sit down. While I watched them on the replay, I was thinking how opponents used to rally whenever the Ateneo starters had to sit down, but as the season progressed, the bench grew more cohesive and now we have some pretty capable shock troopers coming in, which bodes well for when the lineup changes next season.

On the frontline, there was practically no contest. Rico Maierhofer may have contributed 17 points to La Salle's final score, but Rabeh Al-Hussaini was playing unconscious and scored an amazing 31 points, just two shy of his career-high (in the loss to FEU). The Archers simply could not contain him. At the same time, they were simply unable to produce against Nonoy Baclao, who earned seven shotblocks in this game, the last being a spectacular one on Maierhofer that you can see in this video:



Nonoy is currently drawing a lot of flak from La Salle fans because of what he did after making that block, but apart from believing that his actions were somewhat justified (and not so very wrong because he just yelled and didn't curse or call Maierhofer names), I kind of liked seeing his reaction after making that block, as well as Rabeh's reaction after scoring sometime in the fourth quarter. It was good to see the boys let out some emotion after keeping it bottled up for most of the season - maybe it's even important to do so now that they're in the finals against La Salle and the pressure is at its greatest.

At any rate, the boys are one win away from the crown (and so are the Ateneo Blue Eaglets, btw - they defeated FEU-FERN in Game 1 of the juniors division finals). I expect their opponents to try to come back stronger in Game 2, but as far as the seniors finals is concerned, I honestly don't know if La Salle has anything left with which to win the title. I think only a major upheaval in the alignment of the planets can prevent the Blue Eagles from taking the championship on Thursday, and I believe God's going to give my boys a break this time and give them the crown they deserve!