SWM SPECIAL REPORT: AN OFF-SEASON HARDCOURT PBA ROADSHOW
TWO ON THE ROAD FOR TOYOTA
Sports Weekly Magazine
Feb. 20-27, 1981
Once just might be enough, but twice?
“Well it could be something,” said Ed Ocampo as he mulled the impact of one win and a possible two over the Crispa Redmanizers in the light chill of a nearing dawn at the Verandah coffee shop of the Hotel Magellan in Cebu City.
It was just 12 hours before the Toyota Tamaraws, with Ocampo as their new coach, were to take on the Redmanizers at the Cebu Coliseum in the first of a two winningest ballclubs aimed at enabling Cebu and Davao to raise funds for the coming Papal visit to these two Southern Cities.
Probably more than Coach Baby Dalupan who only came to Cebu on the day of the game, Ocampo, who arrive with his boys ahead of Dalupan, had a lot riding on the outcome of the Tamaraws’ first meeting with their arch rivals for PBA supremacy. Even assuming that the games were exhibition, nothing-at-stake stints.
If he wins even one, the first game especially, well, that could be a good start in his announced determination to instill in the Tams that old will to wi, something that appeared to have been impaired with the Tams’ traumatic series of three third place finishes in last year’s PBA season.
Two wins, and the 42-year-old Ocampo, a four-time former Olympian tapped by Toyota to replace the ousted Fort Acuna a month ago, will be, as he put it, “something.”
Well, “something” it turned out to be, a stunning sweep no less — that which the apparently born-again Tamaraws pulled off as they stunned the Redmanizers by 12 points, 112-103, at the Cebu Coliseum, and the following evening at the CYO gym in Davao City by six points, 114-108.
Both games were played before big turnouts, although Cebu, with a crowd of more than 8,000 that filled every open space at its ramshackle “Coliseum,” could claim that it had provided the proper backdrop for the first meeting between Toyota and Crispa since 1975, the first year of the PBA, when the two teams clashed there in a regular league game.
And what a game the Cebu crowd, which included Cardinal Julio Rosales, Gen. Emilio Narciso and Cebu Mayor Solon, saw!
“It was almost as if a championship was stake,” said Ting Cruz, one of three referees who officiated the game.
“They call this an exhibition?” the Cebu director of the Crispa-Toyota fundraising project, Alberto (Babe) Alvarez, wanted to know.
To be sure, the match was purely exhibition and nothing as appealing as a championship trophy was up for grabs. But it was still Toyota-Crispa, and as Coach Ocampo himself said earlier, “in a Toyota-Crispa match, there is always such a thing as prestige that’s involved, an old rivalry that always flares up, and set against these, anything can happen.”
A lot of things certainly did happen in Cebu that harked back to the big dome encounters between Crispa and Toyota.
There was the usual outburst of temper — Mon Fernandez and Bernie Fabiosa got into a near spat almost in front of Cardinal Rosales; there was a usual sight of a player — Nick Bulaong of Toyota — who never got back into the game after a bad fall; and of course, there was the usual raucous reaction from the crowd everytime a field goal was made, a bruising battle for a loose ball took place and there were heated remarks from the benches of both teams over what they felt were questionable decisions in the officiating.
Although they were able to put in only two practice sessions since they returned from trips abroad, a part of their prize for winning the 1980 All-Filipino conference championship, the Redmanzers managed to come up with their old sock against the superbly conditioned Tamaraws, who had been training almost daily since Ocampo took over as coach.
At the end of the third quarter, when they led the Tamaraws by as much as six points, 85-79, it looked like they were well on their way to a walkaway over a Toyota team playing minus Mon Fernandez and Arnold Tuadles, both of whom were stuck with five fouls apiece.
But in the end, Toyota’s top shape and its rediscovered will to win paid off as the Tams came crawling back to take the lead at 90-88 and went on from there to come through with a gusty finish despite their loss of Fernandez, Tuadles and Pol Herrera, all of whom fouled out.
A crippling 6-0 burst out touched by Tuadles before he fouled out and the back-in-form Danny Florencio was what sent the Tamaraws out front to stay in the last quarter.
And the wonder of it all was that when finally the scoreboard proclaimed a cinch Toyota victory, the Tams had only six men left — Fernandez, Tuadles and Herrera having fouled out earlier and Nick Bulaong on the sidelines with a foot injury. Add to this fact that by then, Sonny Jaworski could only do so much with his five fouls, and you’ve got a pretty fair idea, even if you were not there, why the Cebuano basketball fans’ lusty cheers for a team that came through with nothing less than a rabbit-in-the-hat trick.
Toyota’ victory over Crispa in Davao followed almost the pattern of the Tamaraws’ win 24 hours earlier in Cebu.
In Cebu, the Redmanizers foldd in the last four minutes. It took them longer in Davao — there were still three minutes left in the gameclock — but a foldup it was just the same.
With about a minute left, Coach Dalupan began pulling out most of his first stringers, leaving only Abet Guidaben, and wit that subtle gesture of concession, he indicated that Crispa has had it.
Before the fold-up, however, the Redmanizers were riding high and even led by as much as 10 points midway in the second quarter. Clearly, they had that old sting, but they couldn’t sustain it, and when Toyota came scrambling back with a running game and a marked ferocity in the battle for the rebound, the Redmanizers were doomed to the same fate that hit them in Cebu.
In another battle for survival of the fittest, Crispa had again lost out.
“Wala pa sa kondisyon,” said Coach Dalupan, sounding every bit like a man whose machine had failed him on an uphill climb.
Coach Ocampo, on the other hand, had every reason to exult, and again to stay up till the wee hours of the morning, drinking coffee with a sportswriter-friend.
“Our conditioning paid off,” he said. “That plus what I feel is a fired-up mood on the part of all the boys to make up for 1980.”
Does he see the whole thing as the beginning of a Toyota turnaround?
“No doubt about it,,” he said, sounding like the old “miracle man” of 1979 who’s on the verge of again pulling off a stunner.
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