Ateneo de Manila limited University of the East to only 16 points through all of the second half while its bench players took over from the Blue Eagles’ Three Kings in a 68-51victory last night that took them to the top of the standings in the UAAP men’s basketball competitions at the Mall of Asia Arena.
The Blue Eagles shackled their foes to only five points in the third period and only 11 in the last while exploding with 18 unanswered points in a nine-minute stretch that was all they needed to set the tone for their fifth win in six games. The Red Warriors remained winless in a four starts.
With top guns Greg Slaughter, Nico Salva and Kiefer Ravena riding the bench, back-up men Tonito Gonzaga, Ryan Buenafe and JP Eram  combined in a stunning 18-point barrage from a precarious 44-39 lead, midway through the period, to enter the last seven minutes of the game with a 62-39 advantage.
The Blue Eagles’ anticipated climb to the top of the standings hardly matched the drama that transpired in the previous game.
Aljohn Mariano took charge for University of Santo Tomas at the endgame of a war of attrition with De La Salle University, clustering four points in the last 51.5 seconds to lead the Growling Tigers to an 84-82 double overtime win in the first game.
Mariano actually preserved his own heroics in regulation when he sent the game into its first overtime with reverse layup with 9.7 seconds left for that 71-all standoff.
The reed-thin wingman went on to score all but three of Santo Tomas’ 13 points in the two extra periods to finally frustrate the fighting Green Archers, who faltered with poor free throw shooting in the end.
The Tigers, thus, stormed to their third straight win — and their third top-caliber victim at that — in climbing up the standings with a 3-1 win-loss slate. The Archers absorbed their third straight defeat after a two-win start.
UST struggled through the first four minutes of the second overtime which opened at 80-all, missing five attempts at the basket which the Archers barely exploited as only LA Revilla could produce a jumper while Jeron Teng and Norbert Torres both missed their free throws.
With the Green Archers protecting that 82-80 lead, Mariano finally came alive for UST in the last 51.5 seconds, beating La Salle slotman Yutien Andrada on the drive with a wicked cross-over for a layup that tied the count at 82.
Then UST’s Cameroonian reinforcement Karim Abdul made sure that Mariano’s heroics will not go for naught. The hulking slotman blocked a drive by Revilla that turned the ball over to the Tigers.
In the ensuing play, Mariano knocked in a jumper from quartercourt that shoved UST ahead at 84-82, leaving DLSU 7.1 to map out its final offensive.
But Abdul was there anew to thwart the Archers’ bid for a another overtime when he swatted away a short jumper by Andrada with the ball going out at the endline, with only .6 of a second on the gameclock.
Left with no viable chance for a basket, Revilla could only throw a wild shot at the basket as time expired.
Far Eastern U tries to join Ateneo de Manila atop the standings anew when the Tamaraws take on winless University of the Philippines, seeking to recover lost ground after that previous loss to National University. FEU and UP face off in the 2 p.m. first game also at the MoA.
In the second game, the Bulldogs will sustain the momentum of that inspiring victory over the erstwhile unbeaten Tamaraws and face Adamson at 4 p.m.