Friday, October 03, 2008 Lañete’s triple treat By Marian C. Baring Sun.Star Staff Reporter
OUTGOING senior Von Harry Lañete celebrated his birthday in style. Aside from being drafted in the Philippine Basketball League, Lañete helped steer the University of the Visayas Green Lancers to draw first blood in the best-of-five finals series of the Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (Cesafi) basketball competition in a lopsided 86-74 win over the University of San Jose Recoletos yesterday at the Cebu Coliseum.
Lañete, who turned 23 yesterday, played the role of a silent assassin scoring 14 points for the Lancers, right after the confirmation of his PBL draft with Harbour Center.
A dream come true, was how Lañete described the looming chapter of his basketball career.
“I have always wanted to make it to the big leagues. Now that I am here, I will make sure that I will make it worthwhile,” Lañete said.
Playing in his last year in the collegiate league, Lañete is set to follow the footsteps of his brother Chico, who is now in the PBA and Garvo, who is now in the PBL.
New look Jaguars
Meanwhile, in the game, the USJ-R Jaguars waited for four years for another chance to face perennial champions UV in the finals. And they seemed to come prepared, complete with a new game face and shaven heads, the Jaguars looked the part, but failed to deliver.
The Jaguars of coach Edito Salacot started off strong with a 7-0 run with Armand Ponce opening the onslaught with a three-point bomb, further padding its lead to 10 points, 14-4, as they took advantage of the new formula UV head coach Boy Cabahug was testing—putting in a different starting unit.
However, after finding himself buried by 10 points in the first four minutes of the game, Cabahug deemed it necessary to field in the heroes of the game, Lañete, Chris Diputado, Ritchum Dennison and Greg Slaughter.
, who turned the game around for good with a 16-0 run to end the first quarter with the favor on their side, 24-19.
USJ-R managed to reclaim the lead late in the second period, 37-36, behind Lyndon Gudez and Ponce, but still eventually handed it back to UV when Junjun Lasala scored a bucket and Diputado made a buzzer-beating triple.
In the third period, The Green Lancers became even more intensified barraging the baskets with several three-pointers.
What added to USJ-R’s drawback was when its top players could not get their acts together.
“We had a good start but at the end, they just started playing individually. And my players were off today,” said Salacot.
USJ-R’s usual top scorer Luther Justiniani failed to become an asset as he was reduced to just four points, all scored from the free throw line.
