THE eighth season of the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. will hit center stage this Saturday and for the first time in eight years the playing field has been leveled.
“This is probably the first time that one is certain when they say that any team could win this year’s Cesafi title. This will be the closest and most competitive season of the Cesafi,” said Cesafi deputy commissioner Rico Navarro in the league’s launching yesterday at the Cebu Coliseum.
Although still tipped to win owing to an unprecedented seven straight titles, the University of the Visayas (UV) Green Lancers no longer has the mantra of invincibility.
However, UV head coach Elmer “Boy” Cabahug remains confident of his wards.
“As far as we are concerned, we can still defend the title. We have our weaknesses that is why we’ve been playing in many pre-season tournaments to identify these,” said Cabahug.
Within the Cesafi ranks, however, UV is still the most feared team. Of the seven coaches and school officials who attended the launch, four think UV will still win this year.
A close second is the University of San Jose Recoletos (USJ-R), which is expected to fight UV for the 2008 crown. In last year’s semifinals, USJ-R extend its series with UV to Game 3, with all games decided by a point.
“I believe UV is still the team to beat. USJ-R is strong this year,” said USJ-R athletic official Disocoro Himotas.
This was seconded by Cebu Institute of Technology athletic director and head coach Alex dela Torre.
“Who will beat UV? That is the question. Until now, every single school still wants to beat UV,” dela Torre said. “If you can beat UV, a team will have proven itself and you can believe that you can beat any team.”
Hungrier
Himotas added that he also believes that the hungrier team will win.
And for the two teams touted to face off for the title, the fight is on.
“Most of us in the team are in our last year and we want to leave something to USJ-R before we leave,” said USJ-R’s Jan Malinao.
This year’s batch of UV players, meanwhile, also don’t to be the one responsible for arresting the team’s dominance in the league.
Ritchum Dennison, one of UV’s senior players know what the team lacks and is already gearing up to fill the slack.
“We have a smaller lineup this year. In fact, we only have Greg (Slaughter) as our big man, but we will do everything in our power to defend our championship,” he said.
The Cesafi 2008 season will open this Saturday at the Cebu Coliseum. The show starts at 1 p.m. followed by the junior basketball matches between University of Cebu and University of Southern Philippines-Foundation team at 4 p.m. The day caps with the matchup between UV and its runnerup for the last two years, the University of San Carlos Warriors.(MCB)
