Sunday, November 04, 2007 Sacred Heart SBP, Paserelle teams book finals seats in Milo Best Regional tilt
AFTER last year’s ugly experience, the two teams of Sacred Heart School-Jesuit Eagles are close to reversing it as both the Small Basketeers of the Philippines (SBP) and Paserelle squads book seats to the final round of the regional championships of the Milo Basketball Efficiency and Scientific Training yesterday in Bacolod City.
The two SHS-J squads, however, took different paths to the title round with the younger SBP team moving to the finals with relative ease after sweeping all of its assignments. The Paserelle troop, on the other hand, had a tough time before taking the finals slot.
Last year, Cebu, which was represented by University of San Carlos teams, was caught in a fiasco. The Paserelle team lost the chance to fight for the championship when the wrong formula for computing for the quotient was used. In all the confusion, their SBP counterparts were demoralized and also lost their championship.
That fiasco resulted to the absence of a Cebu team in the national finals.
Change
This just might change this year as both teams made it to the final round without going through the hassles USC went through last year.
In the SBP action, SHS-J first defeated St. John Institute of Bacolod, 59-29, and later trounced Ateneo de Iloilo, 52-42.
Milo Best Cebu’s franchise holder Mar Cabahug said Adrian Marvin Mueller dictated the tempo of all of SHS-J’s games.
The team leaned on the monster performances of the trio of Mueller and Alexander and Izak Kiefer Lim to advance to the final round with a clean 2-0 win-loss slate and will be facing the winner of the match between St. John and Ateneo de Iloilo, which was still going at it at press time yesterday.
First setback
Meanwhile, the Paserelle team survived a first game setback to still join the final round. SHS-J lost to Iloilo Central Commercial High School (ICCH), 63-55, but made up for it when it won its afternoon assignment, 74-56, over St. John Institute of Bacolod.
The Pasarelle Eagles were playing one man short as they went to Bacolod with only 14 players. Under the Milo BEST rules, this will mean that one quarter of the game will be played with only four players.
SHS-J may have lost to Iloilo in their first match-up, but it will not be such a hard task for the Eagles today when they face off again. In their game yesterday, the Eagles controlled most part of the game and even lead in double digits. It was only in the fourth quarter, when Iloilo sent in its toughest five, that it managed to pull away down the stretch to win.
The regional champions will represent Central Visayas in the national finals later this month. (MCB)
