This Week in Philippine Sports: Belga Knows Fakes.

I know I'm quite a loser of a sports fan because I missed a "thriller" of a volleyball game between DLSU (Wensh Dear!) and Ateneo (Greta Beybe!). But with a personal purpose in life that happened to coincide with that day would make one feel just okay (Translation: I just got my long awaited phone bitches!). So forgive me if I concentrate on just one game. But this one game deserves a lot of things to talk about. Let's get it on!

- The science behind Beau Belga's shot fake is close to inexistence. This is one of the moments where you're watching ROS on TV with your friends, see them run their high-low play, see Belga receive the ball at the top of the key, and then suddenly execute a betting game with your friends in a split second and see if Beau will shoot or fake and drive. That bears an almost equal probability as a toss coin. His starting form for a jump shot and a shot fake is really the same; heck it's even hard to identify it when you play and replay AND replay the game tapes! The bad news is, when you don't go for the shot fake and just let him shoot, he's as dead eye as his teammate Jeff Chan. So I pretty much understand where Vernon Macklin was going through when he kept biting those shot fakes over and over again.

- The next painful thing after that bait, he'll do Jason Castro moves... ALL THE TIME! Last night? He kicked out that ball to an open teammate for a three. He drove hard to the basket getting lay-ups, fouls, and and-ones. He drops it to another teammate inside after making help defenders commit. HE'S MAKING HELP DEFENDERS COMMIT TO HIM! And he's not even a third-option-on-offense type of guy. Where is this world going?

- This makes me think that the line "What a Jason Castro move by Beau Belga!!" will evolve from being witty to "Holy kamote! The opposing team is in serious trouble."

- When Ginebra was stacking losses like small empty balikbayan boxes, I always thought that one part of the problem was LA Tenorio passing too much. He passes up open makeable three pointers for drives headed to nothingtown, and kick it out again, leaving his teammates clueless on what to do with the ball. The worst part is he'll pass up those threes with defenders still four or five feet away, giving defenders a better chance to stop his dribble penetration. Even though he was going like 3-8s or 2-9s from the field I still believed he shot less. Last night's game proved me right. He didn't pass those open threes and made them. I believe he made double digit points and shot well last night... and almost won!

- Now why did they lose? Free throws. It will not lead to those tense moments down the stretch had they made those free throws. If only Macklin had made a couple more and Mark Caguioa nailing those three straight free throws instead of missing then, then we might have ourselves a tied 2-4 Manila Clasico.

- Speaking of those tense moments down the stretch, this is where chemistry kicks in. That play where Kerby Raymundo tossed the ball over to the table officials, it was easy to decipher... Kerby thought LA was already running ahead when he passed that ball. Apparently LA was just standing there waiting for him. Kerby let his instinct rule over his senses, thinking he was passing the ball to Roger Yap. It resulted to turnover. Kerby then got a lot of unnecessary heat for that one, throwing his relatively great game out of the door.

- While we're at it, how LA and Macklin playing good music together is such a pleasure to watch. Like how many alley-oops did they made? 41?

- And how many fouls was called out of those 41 alley-oops? 138! Goodness! Those phantom fouls was close to unbearable. It made me wanna pluck those whistles down to the referees' throats. If the commissioner's office decides to review the calls of the entire game, those three refs will be suspended by next game day.

- Last thing... ROS is doing this winning thing minus Jeff Chan. Once Jeff returns, this would be interesting.

See you next week!


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I think I'll still see her working for Jaguar despite tendering her resignation three weeks ago when the 2013 Manila International Auto Show comes dancing around April 4-7. Again, the 2013 Manila International Auto Show will be held from April 4-7, 2013 at World Trade Center Manila. And again I think I'll still see her there working for Jaguar despite tendering her resignation three weeks ago.