Weekend Basketball: College & Youth

What are you going to watch? College basketball, or an international 16-Under youth tournament featuring foreign teams? So what do we have?

Cebu is hosting a regional eliminations leg of the Champions’ League this weekend where CESAFI’s University of Cebu (UC) and University of San Jose Recoletos (USJ-R) are up against two tough opponents from Manila in Adamson University (ADU) of the UAAP (fifth place) and NAASCU champion San Sebastian Recoletos-de Cavite (SSR-C). As expected, Adamson is favored to take the first slot, while the second slot is up for grabs among the three other teams. I’d like to believe that UC can handle SSR-C, with the two Recoletos teams having an outside chance of making it to the top two. The crucial task at hand for UC is to forget about its loss to UV in the finals and start all over.

Why is this relevant? In last week’s column, we talked about how UV has dominated the Cebu collegiate scene as if it were a monopoly. The CESAFI hasn’t experienced a non-UV championship for the past nine years, and it looks like a tenth straight is a realistic goal. We even branded UV as a local giant of a team. But that’s the good and impressive news for now. The bad news is that the CESAFI hasn’t made a dent in the national collegiate scene for quite some time now. A local collegiate championship will show that UV might just happen to be the big fish in a small pond, but how will it fare in the bigger pond that includes all the top collegiate teams in the land? To further stretch the question, how competitive are our Cebu collegiate teams against the rest of the country? Cebu has traditionally been known to have the strongest set of college teams outside of Manila. And it’s that time of the year again to see if this is true. UV has had a couple of Final Four finishes in the Champions’ League, but the past two years haven’t been too kind to the Lancers. UC and USJ-R have likewise been to the Champions’ League, but couldn’t get too far.

So brace yourselves as we’ll get a litmus test on exactly how strong our CESAFI teams are against other teams in the land as the league’s #2, 3 and 4 teams play in the regional eliminations of the Champions’ League. Earlier in the week in Bacolod, University of San Carlos (USC), third placers in the CESAFI, lost its first game to Arellano University of the NCAA, 74-79. But they came back to score wins over West Negros University of Bacolod, 71-57, and Holy Trinity College of Gen. Santos, 86-63 to end their stint with a 2-1 record. In this scenario, Cebu defeated the teams from the Vismin but couldn’t overcome the NCAA team. But since the top two teams of this eliminations will make it to the Sweet 16 round of the Champions’ League, we’ll take that as a good sign for USC and the CESAFI. Since USC lost to a Manila team, then we can say we’re still within the norm. But if the Warriors also lost to both WNU and Holy Trinity, then that’s a different story already. And by the end of today, we’ll find out if UC and USJ-R will be joining USC and UV in the Sweet 16.

Aside from hosting a regional elimination phase of the Champions’ League, Cebu is also hosting a tournament for the best 16-year-old players from four different countries. Also being played this weekend is the Nokia Pilipinas Youth Invitational Basketball Championship featuring the 16-Under youth teams of the Philippines, Iran, Japan and Chinese-Taipei. This is a tune-up tournament for the four teams who are seeing action in the Asian Youth championship later in the month.

While the college players give us a peek at today’s top players, this tournament for 16 year-old kids will give us a glimpse at the future of Asian basketball. Iran is currently the Asian champion in the men’s division with many of that champion team’s players coming from the Iranian youth teams of the past. For the Philippines, the name that will stand out most is Kieffer Ravena, Ateneo’s top high school player whole led the Eaglets to back-to-back UAAP championships in the juniors division. Rene Sta. Maria of La Salle Greenhills will also be a familiar sight to followers of the local youth/SBP/Passerelle scene as he once played for the Sacred Heart School-Jesuit Passerelle team that won the Milo-backed BEST Cebu Passerelle championship and placed second in the Visayas Regional Finals two years ago. That’s how far Cebu’s participation in the 16-Under team goes as nobody else has made it to the team.

These young players may not be as popular as today’s current crop of collegiate standouts, but it’s worth taking a look at them now to see who among them will make it all the way to the big leagues. The bonus is that we’ll get to see the first fruits of Iran’s basketball program. As the new champions of Asia, they must be doing something right with their youth program.

While many might say that the aspect of timing wasn’t considered when both tournaments were organized, we can consider ourselves lucky to be hosting both. I can already see the diehard basketball fans shuttling along the two blocks of Sanciangko that separates the USC Main Gym and the Cebu Coliseum. You can also bet that a few will have difficulty on deciding on which games to watch. Will they watch four collegiate teams, two who they’ve seen play in the CESAFI? Or will they go for the fresh look of youth in the national teams featuring players who are only 16 years old?

The choice is for the fan to make. He’s had Thursday to Sunday to choose which to watch in a win-win situation that’s good for Cebu. College, youth and more? Bring them on!

* * *

Time-out: Happy birthday to Delo Mingo!

Paging MCWD. Due to your lack of sensitivity (or plain stupidity), your unfinished excavation job (with crude traffic guides) along the Cebu North Road near the corner of Canduman road caused a massive traffic jam yesterday. But then again I don’t think you guys ever cared about it.

You can reach me at [email protected]