Sunday, October 03, 2010

Thursday

At the start of the season, everybody knew that the Ateneo Blue Eagles as a team wasn't as strong as it was the year before. In fact, none of them made the Mythical Five this year. There really wasn't a superstar in the team; there was not a staple go-to guy, and yet, they achieved what they set out to do. It looked like a tall order with the rival (FEU, not La Salle) tallying a near-perfect win-loss record and was highly favored by everyone else outside of the teams playing in the finals.

The 2010 Championship has demonstrated how extremely capable Norman Black is of building a strong, motivated, and winning team even in the absence of superstars.  When the Blue Eagles first came out to the court during Game 1 of the Finals where they trashed FEU so badly, even the crowd felt how motivated these boys were and we knew it was going to be a good day. They started pulling off fastbreak after fastbreak and we could see in their eyes how fired up they were and that they were having fun. By the third fastbreak, they were smiling at each other while running towards the opposite side of the court. Waking up on Thursday morning, it felt like Game 2 was in the bag. And it was!

I only saw the last few minutes of Game 2 for the first time tonight on Youtube and I rejoiced when the buzzer went off as if it just happened, but sad at the same time that I wasn't able to see the game live even on TV. I'm such a big fan of the Blue Eagles but last Thursday, unfortunately, I did not have time to give a damn that I wasn't able to follow it even on Twitter. 

There were a lot of instances before when I'd weigh between two things and the litmus test that my friends and I use has always been, "Will I remember this 10 years from now?" Surely, I won't remember what the heck I was doing on my computer or where I was even at that time in 10 years, but I will remember that Ateneo did a historic three-peat in 2010, which I did not see and did not even celebrate. It's just sad but it's not like the death of me. I can live with it.

NBD.