Ferriols of old comes to the fore for FedEx

One by one, as players kept getting tabbed in the first round of the rookie draft, everyone wondered whatever happened to John Ferriols.

Instead, he was drafted in the second round by a FedEx team that badly needed to beef up its frontline for the coming Philippine Basketball Association season. And it could not have been a more perfect union.

While other teams passed up on Ferriols because he is an undersized power forward who could be exploited down low, the Express took in the bruising 6-3 scorer because of one crucial piece of data in his resume. He was a former Most Valuable Player in a now-defunct pro league.

Or did anybody forget?

Slowly though, Ferriols is starting to make people recall that, capping it with a splendid performance that earned him the Samsung Best Player Week during the stretch of Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 and helping the Express defeat Alaska to gain a safe passage to the quarterfinals.

Ferriols had a career-high 24 points, largely because the Aces had no one to stop his post moves and one-handed tosses to the ring down low.

"Si John, talagang maganda ang nilalaro lately, kahit sa practice," said FedEx coach Bonnie Garcia.

Ferriols couldn’t have picked a better time to explode.

The Express badly needed a win to wiggle out of any complication that may arise from the battle for a quarterfinal ticket in the struggling Group A.

"Ayaan na namin magkaroon pa ng playoff so we made sure that makuha na namin ito," said Garcia.