GMA NEWS:
With just two minutes left in the game between De La Salle University and National University, the TV panel statistician handed Aaron Atayde a piece of paper. Atayde covered the game as a broadcaster. Beside him, Luigi Trillo observed the game as a television analyst.
Together, as a broadcast team, they discussed La Salle's chances of making the Final Four. Even before the game started, Atayde and Trillo knew it wasn't going to be easy. When Atayde read the hastily scribbled notes on the piece of paper, he concluded it was going to be impossible.
Atayde and Trillo are from La Salle. I am from Ateneo. We can't change the color of our schools any more than we can change the color of our eyes. Some might expect me to laugh at La Salle's woes. Some might think I enjoyed listening to Atayde and Trillo pretend they weren't pounding the table when Kyle Neypes made basket after basket in NU's lethal late-game surge. I'm kidding.
Atayde is a pro. Trillo has delicadeza. They didn't gripe on-air. But I felt their disappointment. For I was too. Sincerely. They're from Sparta. I'm from Athens. Even as Sparta burned, I didn't rejoice. I was too stunned.
"There was tremendous pressure on DLSU to win this game," Trillo shared. "And NU played great transition defense. NU just swarmed all game."
Credible people swore La Salle was strong. I agreed. Revilla, Atkins, Vosotros, Tampus, and Marata scampered like ninjas on the court. The combined height and wingspan of Van Opstal, Torres, Paredes, Andrada, Mendoza, and Gotladera could dwarf most PBA D-League teams.
But what Atayde saw on a sheet of paper in the dying moments of La Salle's penultimate game revealed what plagued the Archers all-season long: DLSU's last FG 7:01 Maui Villanueva. In their most crucial fourth quarter of the season, against a team that wouldn't make it to the Final Four, the Archers couldn't score.
"When the statistician gave me the sheet that said La Salle hasn't made a field goal in the last five minutes, I knew it was over," Atayde admitted. "That's when I said to myself I had to prepare for the end."
Maybe players didn't mix with the system. Maybe the system needed to adjust to players. Maybe coach Dindo Pumaren needed both system and players to co-exist. Maybe the whole team was in a shooting slump.
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Information Courtesy of GMA News / MICO HALILI
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