Outage stalls Ol’Aces championship

Three minutes and change left from adding the Inaugural FMI Inter-Color Basketball League championship to its already stacked trophy case, Ol’Aces will have to wait for next week to finish off Advance X-Terminators as a power outage hit the Oleai Sports Complex last night.

At the time the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. turned off the juice at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium, the Oleai team was comfortably ahead, 109-96, at the 3:30 mark of the fourth and final quarter.

It was an unexpected turn of events in Game 3 for Advance X-Terminators, the pennant champions—and the bizarre began even way before the power outage.

Expected to steamroll past Ol’Aces with the departure of 6’3” center Abong Camacho to serve in the U.S. Army in Iraq, the Bug Busters just were not able to get themselves on track.

The absence of heart and soul, Edsel Mendoza, may help explain Advance X-Terminators’ lackluster performance. Mendoza reportedly was injured playing for PTI in Wednesday’s 2008 PTI Inter-Government Business Basketball League.

With the menacing Camacho out, Ol’Aces coach Sonny Flores inserted the fleet-footed Jack Lizama at center and the Bug Busters didn’t know what hit them.

Lizama’s ability to join the rest of the Ol’Aces in the run-and-gun attack haunted Advance X-Terminators coach Marvin Deocares all game long.

The 6’1” former Manta Ray’s eight points was salutatorian to Jericho Cruz’s nine in the first as Ol’Aces got off to a 32-30 lead.

Scoring machine Fred Pelisamen then began to hit his stride in the second, igniting for 12 points while Lizama added another eight as Ol’Aces increased its lead to five, 60-55, heading into intermission.

The third proved to be the turning point in the rubber match of the best-of-three affair, as Pelisamen, Lizama, and Cruz joined hands to score 30 of the team’s 36 points, while the rest of the crew hunkered down in defense, to give Ol’Aces a 94-78 lead going into the fourth and final quarter.

The carnage would’ve been worse if not for a closing 8-4 run by Advance X-Terminators after Pelisamen’s 3-point play gave Ol’Aces a 22 points lead, 92-70, with 1:34 to go in the third.

In the fourth, Advance X-Terminators cut the deficit to nine points when defensive specialist John Artates fired up a 3-pointer and youngster Jonathan Lim followed up a miss to make it 89-98 with 8:08 left in the contest.

But Ol’Aces answered that with an offensive flurry of its own as Pelisamen knocked down a contested 3-pointer and Cruz consummated an acrobatic coast-to-coast layup to restore their 14-point advantage, 103-89.

Advance X-Terminators suffered another blow when power forward Gyles Ruluked followed up two consecutive misses with a reaction foul—his fifth—against Marvin Rabauliman.

Both teams appeared just going through the motions with the Bug Busters taking ill-advised 3-pointers galore while Ol’Aces players anxiously await the sound of the final buzzer.

But the Ol’Aces celebration and Advance X-Terminators’ pity party was disrupted when the lights went out at Ada Gym.

FMI league commissioner Boy Garcia said the final 3:30 of the game will be played next week, most probably Tuesday, July 22.

In the first game, GEC Pawnshop swept pennant champions Taga Warriors, 102-95, in their own best-of-three finals in the 40-and-over division.

Taga Warriors led after the first three quarters only to have GEC Pawnshop pull the rug from under them in the fourth and final quarter.

Sonny Ranola paced GEC Pawnshop in the title-clinching victory with team-high 37 points, while Molly Cacho and Larry Palero added 25 and 16, respectively.

Ronald Delos Reyes went ala-Pelisamen in the loss with a game-high 51 markers, but didn’t get enough support from his teammates.

GEC Pawnshop 102 – Ranola 37, Cacho 25, Palero 16, Casabuena 14, Olivos 6, Buenabajo 4, Peleno 2, Celes 2.

Taga Warriors 95 – Delos Reyes 51, Abed 18, Cosino 12, Pineda 8, Nicdao 6.

Scoring by quarters: 23-25, 46-50 69-71, 102-95.

Referees: Gilbert Espinosa and Eric Artillaga.