October 15, 2014
 |
| Photo by JJ Tanael | Graphics by CK Tubice |
Team San Andres is still the team to beat in the 6th Congressman Cesar V. Sarmiento Inter-High School Inter-Town Basketball Tournament.
After securing a slot in the semifinals, the team still has to play three more games in the elimination round.
First among the three is a game with Catanduanes State University-Laboratory High School (CSU-LHS), where members of Team San Andres displayed its might among their fellow Calongbonganons when they stunned CSU-LHS in their homecourt San Andres Town Plaze last November 7.
The next win came even easier when Team San Andres was declared winner by default as the would-be opponent San Miguel Town failed to show up in Bagamanoc where the game was scheduled on November 9.
The recent win, against Catanduanes Colleges (CC) High School, has been the most challenging and dramatic so far.
At the end of the fourth quarter, the teams were caught in a deadlock, 71-71, resulting in an overtime.
The drama unfolds during the last two seconds of the overtime while San Andres has the ball possession, when the table officials sounded off the buzzer with no apparent violation, suspending the game.
Table officials seemed to be caught up with the excitement and called a shot clock violation as the reason for the buzzer going off. But only 22 seconds remained in the overtime when San Andres had the ball, making a shot clock violation (24 seconds) impossible.
After some heated arguments between officials and coaches, the former decided to resume the game where it left off prior to the sounding of the buzzer. San Andres will have the ball in the last two seconds in what would seem another overtime for the game since both tied at 77.
But the CC coaching staff refused to accept the decision and stressed that there must have been a turn over since the San Andres player handling the ball was attempting a shot when the buzzer sounded.
The officials stood by their decision, but player of CC gathered themselves in the middle of the court and stayed there as a sign of their protest, despite the referee's instruction to go back to their bench.
Seeing no chance of backing down from the protesting team, the officials declared San Andres as the winner, saying that refusing to continue playing the game is the same as walking out of it.
Semifinal games will start on November 21. The two teams to advance to the Championship round will start the Best of Five series by December 1.
