Sports Weekly Magazine
August 29-September 5, 1980
Peter N. Acosta
For a season which pad produced more than its share of unusual occurrences, PBA ’80 came up with yet another as Crispa reached for its third straight victory halfway through the double round eliminations of the Invitationals.
The Jeansmakers, winners of their first two games in the series, didn’t make it, blowing a 114-110 decision to the visiting tall and tough Adidas quintet. It was, however, Crispa’s setback that made this a game that will no doubt go down in the PBA’s book of “firsts” but what happened in the closing minute and a half.
It was a stupefying windup.
Consider these:
With 1:28 left in the game clock and Adidas out front by seven points, 109-102, Adidas playing coach Bill Sweek reacted angrily to a mandatory timeout rule after he had called an injury timeout on George Gooden. This was after an earlier foul call had set up Crispa’s Sylvester Cuyler to a stint on the free throw line.
Claiming that he didn’t call a timeout, Sweek banged the officials’ desk with his palms and then kicked a rule book in the air.
For this outburst, Sweek was slapped with two technical fouls by referee Ting Cruz which Atoy Co, playing one of his best games in the series, converted. After which, Cuyler took his turn on the foul line to sink his two free throws.
With that unusual stint from the free throw line which came on two technical and a regular foul committed on a player in the act of shooting, Crispa brought down Adidas’ lead to three, 109-106.
But although losing its coach who was thrown out of the court by referee Cruz, Adidas refused to crack up. On the next play, when the game was resumed after an uproar sparked by Sweek’s tantrum, Gooden, one of the two shortest men in the Adidas lineup, knocked in a short jumper to give his team a five-point lead, 111-106, the time down to 1:11.
Co pumped in one from the side to again close the gap, and it looked like Crispa had a chance to further narrow down Adidas’ lead when the Shoemakers were forced into a violation of the 25-second-must-shoot rule after Co’s shot.
But when Byron “Snake” Jones missed a forced jumper and the 6’5 Randolph Owens made good a three-point stint after scoring and then converting from the 15-foot line on a foul called on Jones, Adidas had the game on ice.
It was a numbing finish for a Crispa team which, after a slow start, had taken a nine-point lead at the half and then had gone into the last period with a seven-point margin at 90-83.
A 12-4 flurry in the first four minutes of the fourth sent Adidas out front by two, 96-94, and then by seven twice, the last time when playing Coach Sweek went into that costly tantrum that almost cost Adidas the game.
Earlier, Crispa’s Philip Cezar also caused an uproar when he touched off a brief brawl among some spectators in the ringside seats behind the goal after he had reacted violently against a heckler.
Compared to this, however, Sweek’s outburst was something.
Sweek, of course, had an explanation for it. “I never called a timeout,” he declared. “If that was a local rule, they should have informed me about it earlier.”
He was still fuming when he said, but somehow, his ire at having been ejected seemed to have been saved by his team’s victory on two clutch hits by Gooden and Owens.
One thing he can’t understand though, he said, was how it seems his team almost always get a lot of foul calls from the referees. “It’s always been like this,” he said. “We’re supposed to be the taller team, and yet, we get all the fouls.”
With his clutch jump shot, Gooden, a former draftee of the Detroit Pistons in the NBA upped his evening’s total to 20 points, the highest for Adidas. For Crispa, the top man was Co who finally recorded his first 30-point output in the five-team Invitationals.
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