San Beda starts NCAA four-peat bid vs San Sebastian

10/22/2009

San Beda and San Sebastian clash in Game One of their best-of-three showdown for the 85th NCAA men’s basketball crown today at the Araneta Coliseum with the Red Lions seeking to complete a four-peat and the Stags eyeing to end a seven-year title drought.

The interesting best-of-three title series, set at 4 p.m., marks the first time in 12 seasons that the Lions and the Stags are facing off in the finals.

San Sebastian won its last two championship meetings with San Beda in 1996 and 1997 to complete an amazing five-peat.

This season, odds should just be pretty even with one school out to extend its dynastic reign to another year and the other to seeking a date with destiny.

“It’s going to be a tough series with a lot of great matchups, it’s basically a pretty-even series considering that we have great players and they have theirs,” said San Beda coach Frankie Lim, whose Lions needed just a game to trounce the Rey Guevarra-less Letran Knights and clinch their fourth straight finals appearance.

“We expect a great and exciting series, it’s going to be war,” said San Sebastian mentor Ato Agustin, who wants to become one of the few coaches to steer a school to the championship right in his rookie season.

Meanwhile, San Beda guns for its first title in four years as it clashes with Letran in their own best-of-three series for the junior title.

The Red Cubs are out to give their multi-titled coach, Ato Badolato, a fitting farewell gift and a championship. Badolato has steered the Cubs to 15 of their 16 titles since he assumed the coaching chores a little over three decades ago and this year should be his last since he intimated early this season that he wants to concentrate on his job as San Beda athletic director.

“It’s my last season, I hope we’ll win it,” said Badolato.

While the Lions had an easier time advancing into the finals, the Stags virtually had to thread through the proverbial eye of the needle as they needed an extra Final Four game to turn back the Jose Rizal Bombers, last year’s losing finalists who will have to wait for maybe another year to end a 37-year title drought.

Tied with Ateneo — now with the other league — with 14 titles each, San Beda, the reigning three-peat champion, is shooting for its 15th crown overall as it tries to inch closer to Letran, which owns a league-best 16 titles.

The Lions would also be gunning for their first four-peat feat since they came close to achieving that goal when they snared three straights titles from 1934-37 only to lose it in the next season.

The other teams that did the trick were Ateneo (1931-34), Letran (1982-84) and San Sebastian, which reigned supreme for three straight years from 1993-96 before snatching two more the next two years to cop a rare five-peat.

San Sebastian, back in the finals after failing to make it that far the last five seasons, for its part, are aiming to haul its first title since it went all the way six years back and 12th overall.

“We’re focusing on winning Game One and for us to achieve it we need to stay focused and sharp form start to finish,” said Lim.

It’s also interesting to note that the Stags won their first duel with the Lions this year, 83-77, last July 1 as part of a league record 15-0 (win-loss) rampage.

San Beda evened things up in the second round with a 71-67 win last Oct. 12 to forge a playoff for the No. 1 seeding two days later that it also won, 71-65.

In both games, the Lions managed to put the cuffs on Jimbo Aquino, the league’s second leading scorer with an average of 20 points a game.

Lim knows the sweet-shooting Aquino should give them problems.

“We’re wary of him (Aquino), he gives us big problems.

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