The fluorescent lights of the Davao City Arena hummed, a high-pitched, electronic counterpoint to the thrumming of 8,000 hearts. The Dasmariñas locker room was a humid, confined space, thick with the smell of sweat, anxiety, and the sharp, citrus tang of halftime oranges. The Dasmariñas National High were on their feet, not resting, pacing the small room, the seven-point lead feeling more like a fragile piece of glass than a comfortable cushion.
"They are a championship team," Coach Gutierrez said, his voice a low, intense rumble. He stood in the center of the room, his eyes scanning his players. "They are smart, they are disciplined, and they just spent ten minutes with their coach drawing up a new way to pick us apart. The first two minutes of this half will decide the game. They are going to hit us with a run. It's coming. Your job is not to stop it—you can't stop a run. Your job is to absorb it. Bend, but do not break."
He turned his gaze to Ian and Cedrick. "They've been forced to respect our guards. That means the paint, which was a fortress in the first half, is now going to be their primary target on defense. They will deny you the ball. You have to be stronger. You have to fight for your position before the pass is even thrown. Be big. Be dominant."
Finally, he looked at Tristan. "Captain. Control the tempo. Do not get into a run-and-gun game with them. They are too good at it. Every possession is precious. We grind them down, we take smart shots, and we choke them on defense. This is our game to win. Don't give them an inch. Now get out there."
On the other side of the arena, the Calapan huddle was a mirror of frustrated, tactical energy.
"They got lucky!" Gerry Ledesma snapped, toweling his face. "That kid Kim hit one lucky shot."
"It wasn't luck," their coach, Riego, cut him off, his voice sharp. "It was a breakdown in our scouting and our discipline. He hit that shot, and you all fell apart. You stopped playing our game and started playing theirs—a chaotic, ugly street-fight. That's what they want."
He drew on his whiteboard. "We go back to what works. We're running a 'Horns Twist' set. We're going to get our shooters open on the second and third actions. And on defense, we deny their bigs. We front the post. We force their guards to beat us from the perimeter again. Now go out and execute."
The buzzer sounded. The teams retook the floor. The crowd roared to life. The third quarter, the championship quarter, was about to begin.
Start of the Third Quarter: Dasmariñas 36 — Calapan 29
Calapan had the first possession. And just as Coach Gutierrez had predicted, the run was immediate.
Tom Ledesma brought the ball up, his face a mask of calm. He signaled the 'Horns Twist.' Borja and Reyes came to the elbows. Tom passed to Reyes, who faked a handoff to a cutting Gerry Ledesma. Marco and Tristan, anticipating the play, switched perfectly, smothering the action. But that was just the decoy.
On the weak side, Riel Mercado set a hard back-screen on Daewoo, and Joey Borja, the power forward, flared out to the corner. Reyes, seeing the play, fired a precise, cross-court skip pass.
Borja caught it, wide open. Daewoo, fighting through the screen, was a fraction of a second too late. The shot was up.
Swish.
Three-pointer.
Score: Dasmariñas 36 — Calapan 32
"Don't fall asleep, Woo!" Marco yelled, clapping his hands. "Shake it off!"
Tristan brought the ball up, his face impassive. Absorb it. Don't break.
He signaled for a post-up for Cedrick, just as his coach had ordered. He tried to feed the entry pass. But Calapan's adjustment was perfect. Reyes was fronting Cedrick, completely denying the pass, and his teammate, Riel Mercado, was shading over, waiting to pick off any lob. The lane was sealed.
Tristan, with the shot clock winding down, was forced to improvise. He drove hard, but the help was there. He kicked it to Marco, who was hounded by Gerry Ledesma. The possession was a mess, ending with Marco throwing up a desperate, off-balance shot that clanged hard off the rim.
Calapan pushed. They didn't even run a play. Tom Ledesma saw the Dasmariñas defense scrambling to get back. He pulled up in transition from 25 feet. A heat-check.
Swish.
The Calapan crowd exploded. The game was tied.
Score: Dasmariñas 36 — Calapan 36
In less than a minute, the seven-point lead had vanished. It had evaporated in a flurry of perfect execution.
"TIMEOUT, DASMARIÑAS!" Coach Gutierrez's voice was a roar of controlled fury.
The team walked to the bench, stunned. The confidence of the halftime locker room was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp shock.
"They hit us," the coach said, his voice surprisingly calm as they huddled. "That was their run. A 6-0 punch. And you're still standing. The score is zero-zero. The game starts now. We just took their best shot. Now, we give them ours."
He turned to Tristan. "Forget the post-up. It's not there. They're denying it. We're going to our 'Pick-and-Pop' series. Ian. You are no longer rolling to the rim. You are popping to the elbow. They are so focused on our shooters and your roll, the mid-range is wide open. Tristan, you find him. Then, we defend. Now go."
Tristan received the inbound. He dribbled, his mind clear, the new directive in place.
He called for the high screen from Ian. "Pop! Pop!" he yelled.
He drove hard to his left, drawing both his defender and Ian's man, Reyes, who stepped up to stop the drive. But Ian, instead of rolling, 'popped' back to the now-vacant free-throw line.
Tristan stopped, pivoted, and fired a bullet pass to Ian.
Ian caught the ball, 15 feet from the basket, with no one within arm's reach. He rose up, his form smooth, and drained the mid-range jumper.
Score: Dasmariñas 38 — Calapan 36
It was a clean, simple, tactical response. The bleeding had stopped.
Calapan, frustrated, went back to their 'Horns' set. Quinahan again at the top. This time, he faked the handoff and drove hard at Ian. Ian, anticipating the move, stayed in front, forcing him to pick up his dribble. Reyes was trapped. He tried to force a pass to Gerry Ledesma, but Marco, who had been anticipating the pass, shot the lane.
Steal!
Marco was on a dead sprint, the ball in his hands, nothing but open court in front of him. He laid it in easily.
Score: Dasmariñas 40 — Calapan 36
"That's what I'm talking about!" Marco screamed, a huge, confident grin on his face. "We're back!"
The game settled into a brutal, grinding trench war. For the next three minutes, the teams traded defensive stops. Daewoo, playing with a renewed, ferocious energy, dove for a loose ball, forcing a jump ball.
Cedrick, in the post, took a vicious charge from a driving Borja, sacrificing his body to get the turnover.
The defensive intensity was suffocating.
Every pass was contested. Every dribble was harassed. The score was stuck, 40-36. It was ugly, gritty, championship-level basketball.
Finally, with five minutes left in the quarter, Dasmariñas broke the stalemate.
Tristan was directing traffic. He saw Calapan's defense was over-playing, denying every pass. They were so focused on the system that they had become predictable.
Tristan called Daewoo up from the corner, a simple, unexpected pass-and-screen action.
Daewoo set a hard, solid screen on Tom Ledesma. Tom, not expecting the 6'2" Daewoo to be so strong, was completely wiped out of the play.
Tristan was open. He took one dribble to his left and rose up from the three-point line.
Swish.
Score: Dasmariñas 43 — Calapan 36
The lead was back to seven. And the play had been created by Daewoo, not as a shooter, but as a physical, intelligent screener.
"Great screen, Woo!" Tristan yelled, pointing at him.
Daewoo, his chest heaving, just nodded, a fierce pride in his eyes. He was finding a dozen ways to contribute.
Calapan was reeling. They looked to their captain. Tom Ledesma drove hard, desperate to make a play. He flew into the lane, but he was out of control. Ian and Cedrick had built a wall. He threw up a wild, circus-like shot. It missed everything.
The ball caromed hard off the backboard. A battle for the rebound. Ian, Cedrick, and Reyes all went up for it. The ball was tipped... tipped again... and landed in the hands of Marco, who had crashed in from the wing.
Marco took one look up court. He saw Tristan, already at half-court, calling for the ball. Marco fired a one-handed, baseball pass.
Tristan caught it. The Calapan defense was in a full, panicked scramble. Gerry Ledesma, sprinting back, managed to get in front of Tristan. But Tristan, his head up, saw a green jersey flashing to the rim.
It was Daewoo.
Daewoo, who had been the last man back on defense, had sprinted the entire length of the floor, his motor on overdrive.
Tristan threw a perfect, soft lob over Gerry's head. Daewoo caught it in mid-air and, in one motion, laid it in.
Score: Dasmariñas 45 — Calapan 36
The arena was stunned. The lead was nine. Calapan's coach was screaming, throwing his hands up in the air. His team was being out-run, out-hustled, and out-fought.
The quarter, however, was not over. Calapan, with their backs to the wall, showed the heart of a champion.
Gerry Ledesma, on the next possession, took the ball and refused to be denied. He used a screen from Borja, and with Marco fighting over it, he simply stepped back, creating a millimeter of space, and launched a three-pointer with a hand in his face. It was an impossible, NBA-level shot.
It went in.
Score: Dasmariñas 45 — Calapan 39
Gerry didn't celebrate. He just clapped his hands and stared at Marco. I'm still here.
The game's intensity ratcheted up. The final three minutes of the quarter were a blur of physicality.
Tristan tried to answer, driving the lane, but this time, he was met by the hard chest of Borja. The whistle blew. Offensive foul. Tristan's first turnover of the half.
"That's a flop!" Marco yelled, but the call stood.
Calapan, energized, came down and ran their 'Horns' set again. This time, Reyes faked the drive and hit Riel Mercado on a perfectly timed cut.
Layup.
Score: Dasmariñas 45 — Calapan 41
The nine-point lead was down to four. The game was a brutal, swinging pendulum of momentum.
"One stop, Dasma! One stop!" their small cheering section chanted.
Tristan took a deep breath. Control the tempo.
He called for a post-up for Ian. It was time to go back to their strength. He fed the ball into the big man, who was being fronted by Reyes. Ian fought for the ball, secured it, and made a power-move to the basket. He was fouled hard by Borja, who had come to help.
"Aaaand one!" Ian roared, but the shot rolled out.
Two free throws.
The gym was a wall of noise, the Calapan fans trying to rattle him. Ian stepped to the line. He bounced the ball, his face calm. He blocked it all out.
First shot... swish.
Second shot... swish.
Score: Dasmariñas 47 — Calapan 41
The lead was back to six. It was a grinder's way of scoring, but it was effective.
Calapan came down. They were tired. Their precise cuts were a little slower. Tom Ledesma tried to force a pass that wasn't there. Daewoo, again, deflected it. The ball was loose!
Tristan dove for it, tying up Tom Ledesma. Jump ball. The possession arrow pointed to Dasmariñas.
"YES!" Tristan yelled, slamming the floor. "That's our ball! That's our effort!"
This was the possession to break them. Tristan brought the ball up. He saw Marco being overplayed by Gerry Ledesma, who was denying him the three.
Tristan signaled to Marco: "Backdoor."
Marco, reading the signal, faked as if he was coming up for a pass, then planted his foot and cut sharply towards the basket. Gerry Ledesma, overplaying him, was a step late.
Tristan threw a perfect bounce pass into the lane. Marco caught it in stride. He went up for the layup.
Anton Reyes, the Calapan center, rotated over, his long arms rising. He was going to block the shot.
But Marco, the flashy, high-IQ scorer, wasn't shooting. In mid-air, he shoveled a tiny, underhand pass to his right.
To a wide-open Cedrick Estrella, who had sealed his own man, and who caught the pass and laid it in.
It was a beautiful, unselfish, championship-level play.
Score: Dasmariñas 49 — Calapan 41
Calapan's coach, Riego, put his head in his hands. His team had been beaten, not by flash, but by perfect, fundamental execution.
The quarter ended with one last, desperate heave from Tom Ledesma that missed everything. The buzzer sounded. The Dasmariñas National High had weathered the storm. They had taken Calapan's best punch, and then, slowly, methodically, and with a surplus of heart, they had imposed their will.
End of Third Quarter: Dasmariñas 49 — Calapan 41
The players walked to the bench, not with the cocky swagger of a team that had blown their opponent out, but with the grim, weary satisfaction of a brawler who had just won a brutal round.
"One more," Tristan said, clapping each of his teammates on the back as they sat down. "One more quarter. We don't let them breathe. We finish this for Aiden."
They were ten minutes away. Ten minutes from surviving the first round. Ten minutes from keeping the promise. And they were not going to be denied.