MIGHTY MIGHTY TIGERS?
The UAAP season is now over for UST. The Growling Tigers kissed their Final Four hopes goodbye last Sunday after bowing to the UE Red Warriors in another nail-biting finish. UST has now lost three of its last four games. Make those three heartbreaking losses. Three important games. Three endgame decisions. Three harrowing defeats.
It seems like the Tigers are just incapable of doing anything good when the game is on the line. Their brains fall splat on the parquet floor whenever the game is in its cardiac moments. The Tigers blew a comfortable 16-point lead against FEU last week, failed to rotate on Maui Villanueva, who made the winning put-back for La Salle last Thursday, and then wasted two possessions in the dying seconds versus UE last Sunday. Those three setbacks are truly bitter pills to swallow. Disheartening. Disappointing. Painful. Agonizing.
There’s no question that UST can play exceptional basketball for the first 35 minutes. But when crunch-time arrives, the Growling Tigers turn into purring pussycats. They bite themselves in the foot in the crucial moments by forcing their shots and committing too many costly turnovers. If there are two things that spelled the Tigers’ doom this season, it’s their constant errors along with their atrocious shot selection.
One clear example: Dylan Ababou. Sorry to the hordes of fans who love, adore, and venerate him, but I consider him the biggest goat for UST this season. Yes, he is clearly a good player, one of the best in fact, but he cost UST several important games due to his terrible endgame decisions. Take it from me: Ababou only plays well against the bottom-feeders. Yes, he puts up decent numbers against the contenders, but most people don’t notice that he usually disappears in the fourth quarter. It’s either he makes an ill-advised shot or turns the ball over.
Ironically, Ababou’s turnovers and awful shot selection are caused by his terrific individual game. Unfortunately, the word “individual” has no place in basketball. Ababou can easily create plays for himself, but he usually forces his shots in traffic, especially during endgame. He has exceptional dribbling skills for a guy his size, but he doesn’t take care of the ball well. He is third in the UAAP in turnovers with 3.2 per game. Not exactly a positive statistic. Most of you will probably argue that good players usually commit more turnovers because they have the ball most of the time. But look at the other players accompanying Ababou in the top 5 in terms of turnovers: Jerick Cañada, Edwin Asoro, Woody Co, and Raymond Aguilar. What’s their common denominator? All of them play for teams already out of the Final Four. You don't see a JV Casio, a Chris Tiu, or even a Marcy Arellano there.
Undeniably, Ababou can score at will. He is fourth in the league in scoring with 15.1 points per game. His versatility and athleticism make him a good offensive player. But does he make his teammates better? The answer is a big NO. In the aforementioned three decisive losses of UST, Ababou personified ball-sharing by compiling zero assists. Z-e-r-o. Zilch. Nil. Nada. For a player who gets the ball as much as him, tallying zero assists in three games is utterly unacceptable. Again, that can be traced to his knack for forcing shots. Instead of dropping the ball to Jervy or kicking it out every time he attracts defenders, he opts to force a shot. Consider this: Ababou has yet to dish out more than three assists this season.
Speaking of Jervy, you cannot ask anything more from him this year EXCEPT to play better defense. He, I think, is the most dominant big man in the UAAP since Don Allado, but UST could’ve won more games this season if he stepped up on the defensive end. Jervy doesn’t really change a lot of shots like Elmer Espiritu, Nonoy Baclao, or Aldrech Ramos. He doesn’t even average one block per game. A guy named Jewel (Ponferrada) intimidates better than him for crying out loud! I think Jervy concentrates too much on scoring that he tends to forget to defend. Pari Llagas, who only puts up 9.0 points a game, scored 20 against him last Sunday.
The crucial losses of UST can also be attributed to Pido Jarencio’s lack of coaching knowledge. Motivational powers can only take a team so far. In the FEU loss, Jarencio replaced Cuan, a fifth-year veteran, with rookie Jeric Fortuna, who in turn, committed two passing blunders that decided the game. Jarencio then unforgivably called a timeout with 5.5 seconds left in the loss to La Salle, which gave the Green Archers, who didn’t have any timeouts left, a chance to set up a final play that led to the Villanueva game-winner.
This picture pretty much sums up UST's campaign this season
(photo from www.inboundpass.com)
UST, in my mind, is actually a better team, man-for-man, than La Salle and FEU, sad to say, these two teams have players and coaches with better basketball IQ. If you look back at the losses of the Tigers so far (they still have a game versus UP), all of them could’ve gone either way. UST only lost at an average of 4.5 points. The only convincing losses of the Tigers were against the Blue Eagles (two nine-point defeats). Again, UST just can’t do anything good during crucial moments.
I really feel sorry for UST’s graduating players: Japs Cuan, Chester Taylor, Francis Allera, Mark Canlas, Mel Gile, and of course, Jervy. They’ve exerted so much effort to bring back the UAAP diadem to España. This season was the best chance for them to take home a second ring, unfortunately, they came up short. I think this year’s roster is even better than last year even without Anthony Espiritu and Jun Cortez. The next several seasons for UST will be a struggle unless they magically find an astounding rookie out of nowhere like Jervy. The core for Season 72 will be made up of Ababou, Fortuna, Khazim Mirza, Chris Camus, and Clark Bautista. Do you think that’s Final Four material? I don’t think so.
UST simply underachieved this year. Most people, including myself, predicted the Tigers to be in the Final Four, other UAAP coaches even tagged them as the heavy favorite, but now, they’ve been reduced to mere spectators. Their inability to execute in endgame resulted to another empty season. Now, it looks like another long title drought is looming in the horizon.