Since Season 57, whoever wins game one of the best of three championship series has greater chances of winning the UAAP Men’s Basketball crown.
By: Geoff Latayan
On September 25, around 4:00 PM (depending on how you adjust your clock or timepiece), number one seed FEU Tamaraws will lock horns with the defending back-to-back champions ADMU Blue Eagles in Game One of the best of three title showdown at the Big Dome.
The Tamaraws aim for their first crown since Season 68 while the Blue Eagles will go for their very first three-peat since joining the league in 1978.
FEU swept their season series against Ateneo but both games could have gone either way if not for the timely baskets of spitfire FEU guard and Season MVP top candidate RR Garcia.
However, the season series is a different animal than the Finals. In the Finals, season statistics will just be a thing of the past. What you have produced this season would be cancelled out. During this time, it is a matter of who wants it more and who is more prepared in all aspects.
The talent will always be a factor. Both teams got the talent to match up with each other. Both teams have big men who can wreak havoc in the shaded lane and can land some short perimeter shots if needed. Ateneo and FEU have guards who can be explosive in scoring and witty in making plays for the team. They also have snipers who can destabilize the defensive system used by one another and defenders who can make life miserable of both teams’ go-to-guys.
Championship experience would be the Blue Eagles’ advantage in this series. The Tamaraws have a sizeable edge when it comes to big men production.
Yes, you can see the distinguishing advantage, edge, or anything you may call it, for both teams. But for now, the message is simple… win game one.
Since Season 57 (the season when the Final Four was instituted), it has been 12 times that a team taking game one would win it all and from Season 70 to Season 72, it has been done by La Salle (Season 70 over UE) and the defending back-to-back champs (Seasons 71 and 72).
Yes, this is the most important thing to do first. Winning game one is pivotal. Winning game one simply means you are up 1-0. Winning game one means you have one foot forward in fulfilling your mission, whether it is claiming your first crown in five seasons or your first, unprecedented three-peat in the league since you joined, 32 years ago.
Furthermore, in this short series, having the game one in your hands gives you a big chance to win it all.
Somehow, it has to be in both teams’ mindset. If they win game one, they will be one step closer for the big prize this season – the UAAP Season 73 Men’s Basketball crown. Come Saturday night, one should be 1-0 and would have a telling advantage for Game Two.
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Somehow, the long-standing debate of who will win if a boxer and a mixed martial arts fighter battle it out has been answered with a thud in the last Saturday of August (Aug. 28 to be exact).
This as former five-time UFC Champion Randy “The Natural” Couture smacked the hell out of former three division world and current IBA heavyweight champion James “Lights Out” Toney via submission to an arm-triangle choke, 3:19 in the first round of their well-publicized match held at the undercard of UFC 118: Edgar vs. Penn 2 at Boston, Massachusetts.
With this development, it sent warning signs to those boxers who think that MMA is easy for them. World Champion boxer Floyd Mayweather had thoughts of invading MMA but it never materialized.
Yes, boxers have cardio and endurance to last MMA fights and high-caliber strikes that can knock out a good MMA Fighter if caught but skills-wise are they good enough? Can they handle devastating takedowns, extricate position predicaments and escape breath-taking submissions?
I remember in the very first UFC held November 12, 1993, boxer Art Jimmerson tapped out after being trapped in a mount by three-time UFC tournament champion and hall-of-famer Royce Gracie.
Look at the current champs of UFC. Somehow, they know how to strike, take opponents down, grapple and wrestle. Some of them are black belts, expert grapplers, submission experts and freakish strikers or some have a little bit of everything, great enough to whack specialists of one craft.
Current UFC Lightweight (155 pounds) champion Frankie Edgar is a purple belt in jiu-jitsu and a US NCAA Division 1 wrestler. However, as a fighter who understands how improving your skills is vital in the UFC, he has coaches boxing, wrestling and jiu-jitsu.
Couture, who won UFC crowns in light heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, can box, administer takedowns and grapple being a former amateur wrestler. He was into several battles and won them impressively. He is 47 but can still whack out guys twice his age.
Today’s one of the best pound-for-pound MMA fighter and UFC Welterweight (170 pounds) title-holder Georges “Rush” St.-Pierre, who will be coming to Manila for a three day visit to promote MMA on Sept. 23 is a diverse MMA fighter that keeps on polishing his skills. St.-Pierre is a third degree black belt in Kyokushin karate, a black belt in Gaidojutsu and black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
He has excellent wrestling skills (though he has not made up his mind yet, he likes to join the Canadian Freestyle wrestling team and qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics) and takedown defense. He also trains in Muay Thai and boxing. So whoever in the boxing ranks would like to say that the welterweight division is a place for sissies, face and beat GSP first.
Now if our very own Manny Pacquiao would like to test the waters of MMA, better know other skills than boxing because it requires more than one skill or sport to beat an average MMA fighter. Better learn from the harsh lessons of Jimmerson and Toney.
