No assurance

The finals series is an entirely different battle.

As expected, Ateneo de Manila University and San Beda College advanced to the finals of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), respectively.

Well, that outcome was heavily expected.

What we didn’t expect, though, was the fact that they did it in a very impressive fashion — a clean sweep of the double-round eliminations.

Ateneo and San Beda were simply cuts above the rest.

The Blue Eagles had taken the UAAP by storm, posting an averaging winning margin of 17.2 points while the Red Lions were equally unforgiving, registering an average winning mark of 18.7 points, including an incredible 46-point victory over their former coach Frankie Lim and his University of Perpetual Help System Dalta, 102-56, last 16 August.

With that, both Ateneo and San Beda were given outright entries to the best-of-three finals while their chasers have to go through the grueling stepladder phase to determine who gets the right to challenge them for the crown.

But does gaining an outright entry to the finals mean that winning the title is already a walk in the park for both the Blue Eagles and the Red Lions?

The first time the Final Four format was introduced in the UAAP was during the peak of University of Santo Tomas’ dominance in 1993.

Dennis Espino, Udoy Belmonte, Chris Cantonjos, Rey Evangelista, Bal David and the rest of the Growling Tigers were so good that they swept the double-round eliminations to be declared as champions.

The following year, members of the UAAP board of trustees realized that there was a loophole in that ruling so they devised a Final Four format in which the team that would sweep the eliminations would still have to go through the best-of-three finals while the rest of the semifinal qualifiers will have to compete in a stepladder encounter.

So technically, the first team to advance to the finals after sweeping the double-round eliminations was University of the East in 2007.

The Red Warriors deployed a crew composed of homegrown stars like Marcy Arellano and transferees like Mark Borboran, Mark Fampulme, Earn Saguindel, Jorel Canizares and Bonbon Custodio to dominate the eliminations and gain an outright spot to the finals.

The Red Warriors squandered whatever advantage they had when they ran into a De La Salle University squad that was playing with something to prove.

Bannered by TY Tang, Rico Maierhofer, Ryan Araña and JV Casio, the Green Archers were fresh from a one-year suspension and were eager to prove that they are still one the best teams in collegiate basketball. They won the crown and reduced the Red Warriors into a mere footnote in UAAP history.

Over at the NCAA, the first team to achieve a perfect elimination round was San Beda in 2010.

With Lim at the helm, Sudan Daniel, Rome de la Rosa, Anjo Caram and Baser Amer breezed through the preliminaries and dominated San Sebastian College in the finals.

Then, Lyceum of the Philippines University, with Topex Robinson as head coach and future World Cup bidder CJ Perez as star player, duplicated the feat seven years later, but the Red Lions were simply too strong and too experienced to be dethroned.

San Beda claimed the crown and the dynasty that the Pirates were trying to build suffered a massive collapse.

With all of these in consideration, we can simply say that sweeping the eliminations doesn’t automatically lead to the title.

The finals series is an entirely different battle.

Various factors suddenly come into play such as championship experience, composure, hunger and preparation.

In the case of the Red Warriors in 2007, they melted in the finals not because they lack firepower, but simply because the Green Archers were the hungrier, more experienced and more fluid team.

A coaching greenhorn in Dindo Pumaren was calling the shots for UE while his older brother in Franz Pumaren was mentoring La Salle. Of course, Franz marched into the finals as a confident and battle-scarred veteran while Dindo came in as a wide-eyed rookie so it was easy to explain the outcome of the series.

Franz gave his younger brother a neat lesson in coaching in collegiate basketball and exposed the Red Warriors’ lack of chemistry and cohesiveness since most of their players were transferees.

This year, Ateneo and San Beda are poised to avert that disaster.

Ateneo is parading a coaching genius in Tab Baldwin and has enough experience after winning the titles in the past couple of years.

On the same note, San Beda has a former Philippine Basketball Association coach in Boyet Fernandez at the helm and is looking for its fourth straight crown.

Both of them will also enter the finals from a very long break with Ateneo enjoying a 16-day layoff while San Beda is already in the middle of a 27-day break, giving it almost one full month to recuperate, train and prepare.

Yes, all of the advantages to win a title are on the sides of Ateneo and San Beda.

But at the end of the day, they still have to work hard and play their best to avoid falling into the dark side of collegiate basketball history.