Saturday, December 29, 2007 Cesafi gets competitive By Marian C. Baring Sun.Star Staff Reporter
EVER since Manny Pacquiao showed what he really is capable of and roared to life after getting cut by Jorge Solis and downing the Mexican in eight rounds—shrieks, screams and a sizeable crowd were rarely associated with the Cebu Coliseum and a Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. Cesafi basketball event.
But for hours last Aug. 4, during the opening of the seventh season of the Cesafi, the coliseum was filled and the crowd came, in volumes, and they screamed a lot.
The shrieks and shrills were not directed at a rock star or a scantily-clad singer.
It was directed ar the baby-faced behemoth Gregory Slaughter, who stands just a shade under seven feet.
The fact that his playing time was probably less than the average time spent lining up outside the coliseum to get in, was not a factor. It was never a factor.
Whether he was warming up, lining up during the flag ceremony, or sitting at the bench. Everyone’s eyes were on Slaughter.
No one in the history of Cesafi had a rookie been this popular. “I was really surprised even taxi drivers know him,” said Slaughter’s father William.
Slaughter’s rise to fame and into the newspaper headlines came even before the Cesafi regular season started.
Slaughter became a hot item on the market as two schools, UV and UC, went into a silent tug-of-war trying to get Slaughter into their respective rosters.
Slaughter eventually wound up with UV, after he was offered not just the regular free lodging, allowance and scholarship, but free education for other family members.
In an effort to maximize the rivalry between and UC and UV over Slaughter, the schedule was redone to have the two teams face each other in the Cesafi opening last Aug. 4.
And organizers, led by commissioner Felix Tiukinhoy, were right on the nose.
People came in droves during the opening just to see for themselves what—or more precisely—who was causing the stir.
He became such a phenomenon that his dad, William, flew all the way from the US to watch him in his debut.
“I am just so overwhelmed at the attention he is getting,” said William during that game.
UV head coach Elmer “Boy” Cabahug did not want to give everything away of his most prized possession and Slaughter warmed the bench for most part of the first period and people were chanting his name. But Cabahug would not succumb to the crowd’s demand.
When the clock struck the final four minute juncture of the opening canto, Slaughter made his dramatic entrance. It was a lackluster game as he scored just two baskets, not enough to make one a superstar, but good enough for an entertainment on a Saturday afternoon.
But as big as his 6-foot-11 frame was, the Cesafi season, the best so far, was not all about Slaughter, nor all about UV.
It was about competition. The real kind.
For years, UV, the seven-time champion and owner of an impressive 54 (or 57, depending on which publication you ask) game win-streak, thought that just by showing up, they’d beat the competition.
This year, they learned otherwise.
Harbinger
As a pre-season competition, Felix Tiukinhoy, with Atty. Baldomero Estenzo, who is one of the founding fathers of the Cesafi, set sail with the maiden voyage of the Partners Cup.
It was a competition exclusively for the Cesafi teams and serves as a soft comeback of the long gone Southwestern University and it became a harbinger of what was to come in the regular season.
After a long time, UV, the undisputed basketball powerhouse of the South, absorbed a loss in the elimination against the University of San Jose Recoletos.
UV head coach Elmer Boy Cabahug brushed this off as merely a small snag, which will never shake the dynasty that UV built.
The headline-maker during the Partners Cup was Junmar Fajardo, a 6-foot-7 teenager of UC who made his presence felt in the pre-season competition. However, Fajardo was dwarfed by a much bigger fish in Slaughter. Injured, Fajardo surrendered the limelight to Slaughter.
After the supposed snag in the Partners Cup, little did UV know that it was just a start of what would be the longest season for the winningest team in Cebu.
Equipped with its powerhouse cast, UV, boasting of being coach Elmer “Boy” Cabahug’s best team yet, won, as expected against all their earlier opponents, that is until they met USJ-R.
UV’s bloated egos received a mighty bashing when it once more lost to the USJ-R Jaguars, 84-71. In seven years, it was only UV’s second loss in the elimination round.
Repeat
To make matters worse for UV, USJ-R repeated in the semifinals before the champion scraped through and marched to the finals and defend the crown it so lovingly protected the past six years. As testament to how close it was, all three games were decided by a point and had the same score, 79-78.
UV losing was music to a lot of peoples’ ears and thousands started to come out and watch the Cesafi games at the Cebu Coliseum.
UV and everyone else expected that just like in 2005, when it lost to UC in the elimination, UV would stand up and sail through the rest of the season. But what happened next was not quite what was expected.
In the best-of-five championship, the Lancers had the surprise of their lives when they faced a gritty University of San Carlos, a school who can’t match UV’s vaunted recruitment program and whose academic requirements from its players sometimes deny it from ever producing a competitive squad.
UV may have lost in the elimination in previous seasons, but every time, the champion rose in the finals. It owned the finals
But this year, the Lancers learned the meaning of fear and, in the process, proved their coach right, this was his best team ever.
The owner of the worst losing streak in the Cesafi, USC completed the turnaround by being the first team to beat the Lancers in a finals series, taking Game One, behind Enrico Llanto and Nińo Ramirez.
The Lancers woke up and took the next two games, but USC, backed by a vocal crowd fought back to even the series.
The competition was so intense that it was everywhere, not just on the court, it spread to the stands.
Game 5 was UV’s turn. Humbled, defeated and stretched to their limits, the Lancers reminded everybody why they are the Lancers, the most successful team in the Cesafi.
