Crispa nearly lost a 20-point lead in the latter stages of the second half before clinching the 1974 MICAA All-Filipino championship over Toyota. The match turned out to be the last for both teams in the MICAA, as they joined seven others to form the PBA.
Crispa beats Toyota, 103-99, regains title
By Danny Santillan
Bulletin Today
Published Wednesday October 16, 1974
Crispa closed the game on what looked like an unstoppable rampage by defending champion Toyota in the last 42 seconds to win, 103-99, and regain the All-Filipino basketball crown - their third - before a crowd of 14,000 last night at the Araneta Coliseum.
The Redmanizers, who smashed the Comets by 24 points, 113-89, in the opener of their best-of-three series last Sunday, saw their five 20-point leads cut to only four and had to fall back on Reynaldo Franco and Alfredo Hubalde to preserve the victory.
After Ramon Fernandez put in the last two points of a 26-12 blitz that brought the Comets to within striking distance, 97-101, with 42 seconds left, Franco rode at the helm of Crispa’s stalling maneuver from there and then set Hubalde up for a jumpshot with only 16 seconds remaining to seal Crispa’s 21st win in the tourney and its fourth straight in the playoffs.
Crispa survived a turnover-prone second half to beat Toyota in the opening game of the best-of-three series for the 1974 MICAA All-Filipino title. The opener came after controversy rocked the league when the Comets were awarded the finals berth because of the U-Tex Wranglers’ decision not to show up in the replay of their semifinal match. U-Tex had earned the right to face Crispa for the title on a highly-disputed buzzer-beater by Danny Florencio, but MICAA officials later ordered a replay of the said contest.
Crispa crushes Toyota in first game, 113-89
By Danny Santillan
Bulletin Today
Published Monday October 14, 1974
Crispa ran up 18 errors in the second half last night and still came out with a ghastly 113-89 rout of defending champion Toyota in the first game of their best-of-three titular playoff for in the controversy-rocked All-Filipino MICAA basketball tournament at the Araneta Coliseum.
A smooth 20-4 play in the first five minutes, which saw the Redmanizers put in 10 of their 13 attempts in that stretch, prefaced the rout of the Comets, who could only come to within 16 points of Crispa at best in the second half as the crowd of 12,000 watched both horrified and thrilled.
Toyota, which advanced to the finals after Universal Textiles defaulted the replay of their rubber match last Saturday, licked Crispa’s early 16-point bubble to only five late in the second quarter, but William Adornado, fresh from the bench, drilled in his four field tries in a 13-2 salvo that pushed the Redmanizers away by 16 again with nine minutes left of the first half.
