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| Norbert Torres and Emmanuel Mbe battled down low in what was an extremely tight game. |
DLSU GREEN ARCHERS over NU BULLDOGS, 87-86 (2OT)
Folks, welcome to the future of Philippine basketball.
Jeron Teng and Ray Parks. Those two names will be making headlines on the sports pages for the better part of the next ten years. They’ll probably team up and don the national colors again. They’ll be drafted early in the first round of the PBA. Thirty years from now, when they look back on their respective careers, they’ll remember a ton of memorable duels.
Starting with this one.
La Salle and NU combined for 173 points in 50 minutes of play, with Teng and Parks combining for 70 of those points. That’s 40% of the game total from just two players. And to think that the game went into two overtimes? Wow. I wish I had watched it live! Even if there were supposedly two hours in between games, this would’ve been so worth it.
Of course, as good as the game was, the guy who came up the biggest winner was Teng. He scored 9 points total in the extra ten minutes to lead the Archers to an all-important fourth win to close out the first round. This win moved them into a tie for fourth with their victims and strengthened their bid to return to the Final Four.
One important revelation about Teng here is that it looks like he’s been practicing his outside shot. He converted 4 of his 7 attempts from beyond the arc, including one in each overtime that helped the Archers escape with the W. Yes, his free throws still need some work (just 3-of-5 – okay, a lot of work!), but he’s clearly improving faster than many probably expected (certainly faster than I thought!). I mean, he shot 14-of-24 from the field – good for 58%! We could be looking at the future “franchise” player of the Archers RIGHT NOW. That’s how good he has become.
On the other end of the floor, Ray Parks kind of bled for his 35. He shot just 10-of-23 from the floor and missed five of his seventeen free throws. Five of seven isn’t exactly awful, but when you consider that all five missed freebies were in regulation of this extremely tight game, then it stings. He was bottled up in the second OT and wouldn’t have scored a field goal then had it not been for his end-of-the-game triple. Still, his all-around numbers were awesome. He did it all. He was LeBron and Teng was Melo. Only Melo won.
In the end, the Bulldogs just couldn't find any reprieve from the mean green machine that was Jeron Teng. They let him shoot from range, which is what the scouting reports probably recommended, but Teng surprised everyone (maybe even himself) by making them pay.
When Teng scored 104 points against Grace Christian High School in the 2011 Tiong Lian tournament, a lot of people didn’t think it was as amazing as it sounded. He did it against a team that wasn’t a basketball powerhouse in a league that was NOT the NCAA or the UAAP. A lot of casual basketball fans probably thought, “let’s see him do that in the big leagues.”
Well, he didn’t score nearly as many points here, but his performance was still enough to break a recent record, and I think it’d be folly to put it past him to repeat the feat again. After all, he still has the whole second round and then four more years to play.
*Special mention to Almond Vosotros, who stepped up big time. He shot in 4 triples and finished with 18 points as LA Revilla continued to play hurt.
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| Jeron Teng was at his best as La Salle rose to a tie for fourth place. |
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| Almond Vosotros reaches as Ray Parks releases one from deep. |
Scores:
DLSU 87 – Teng 35, Vosotros 18, Andrada 8, Van Opstal 7, Torres N 6, Torres T 5, Mendoza 4, Revilla 3, Manguera 1, Gotladera 0, Tallo 0, Webb 0
NU 86 – Parks 35, Rosario 14, Mbe 12, Javillonar 6, Roño 5, Alolino 4, Villamor 3, Khobuntin 3, Singh 2, De Guzman 2, Labing-isa 0, Betayene 0
QS: 25-14, 42-37, 59-52, 69-69, 79-79, 87-86
Notable Performers:
Jeron Teng (DLSU) – 35pts, 6rebs, 4 treys, 2asts
Almond Vosotros (DLSU) – 18pts, 4rebs, 4 treys, 3asts
Ray Parks (NU) – 37pts, 7rebs, 3asts, 3 treys, 2stls, 2blks
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