“The Shot” by Aldeguer
by Absolut Verde
Editor’s Note: While the entire basketball world remembers “The Shot over Ehlo” 20 years ago, we La Sallians will never forget “The Shot over Gelig”. It happened exactly 10 years ago from this day. Let us reminisce that memorable game wherein our Green Archers won their 2nd back-to-back championship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAAlt3LIBGk
It was 9 October 1999. Inside the Cuneta Astrodome, La Salle was playing Santo Tomas for the last UAAP basketball championship of the 20th century.
With 26 seconds to go and his team down by two, La Salle’s Ritualo shot from the side and missed. His teammate Allado, the league’s Most Valuable Player, followed up in one motion, missing as well. He fouled Lao, who went to the other side to shoot his free throws. The first was short. The next one bounced, circled the rim twice and rolled softly in. UST held a three point lead and were 18 seconds away from another date at the altar.
With no timeouts left, Aldeguer moved up court and found Ritualo who scampered to the corner, stalked by two tigers. Ritualo spun, faked, rose to shoot — then passed off to Allado who knew he had no chance. Allado sent it back to Aldeguer waiting behind the three point line. Aldeguer released, the weight of his shot calibrated by the offending contact of Gelig’s hand.
The ball hung in the air as the angels of Anguish and Mercy fought over the laws of physics. Then bedlam. Joaqui Trillo, after a moment of disbelief, shrieked again and again into his microphone in the drunken ecstasy of a man who mixed his metaphors but never his loyalties. Beside him, Jimmy Javier spilled his glass of Schadenfreude.
In that instant, a thousand virgins bit their lips then begged to be bound and savaged. All over the world, mothers changed their minds and christened their newborn sons Fernando, but could not explain why.
Entombed in the Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano, the bones of Leo XIII, the Bishop of Rome who canonised Jean-Baptiste de la Salle and conferred upon Santo Tomas the title “Pontifical University”, stirred from their rest.
In Montevideo, the 59 year old writer Galeano sat by his window remembering the death of El Che 32 years before, and wondered whether everything that went astray on earth ended up on the moon.
Aldeguer fouled out in the extra period but his team did enough to win the game. Some time before the revelers arrived to celebrate at the College Canteen, an old groundskeeper passed by an empty classroom in St. La Salle Hall. No one believed him when he reported hearing an unseen harmonica play the slow notes of a song everyone there knew — a song he first heard at that very spot in 1961.
We did not witness the hex-breaking shot of our generation’s greatest homegrown player, playing in his farewell game. Carlos Felipe C. Flores (BS-AEC ‘94) knocked our eyeglasses into the next row just as Allado made the pass. But we are certain this is what happened.
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I was there!!!! i witnessed the shot myself and how everybody wearing green jumped up in the air
I was there!..probably the best UAAP finals in recent history..
Wow! It’s been that long. But I still have goosebumps watching the video just now. I miss those days
I watched the entire game live on TV. My wife, who is a UST alumna, was beside me on our matrimonial bed cheering “Go UST, go UST!”. I just kept quiet since we’ve been runners up to them for so many years before this game.
Then when Dino hit that miracle shot I jumped and jumped on our bed like a kid who’d just received a dream Christmas treat. My wife was awaken by the commotion unaware of what has been happening after she fell asleep somewhere in the 3rd quarter.
We all knew what happened next. We made a historical title run year after year right after that season. We owned the last team that won the last back-to-back champs of the century, the last team to win a three-peat for the century, the centennial champs, and the first champs of the 21st century.
from ID 96!! I WAS THERE,on my 3rd year in LAsalle UNDER THE BASKET OF UST,4TH ROW FROM THE FLOOR!!
with our game face painted green and white, we witnessed how this all went down!! until now i can hear the KABOOM!! ONE OF THE BEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE.. i remember the whole UST shouting USTE !!! in the last 5 mins cos they were up by 8 or 9, then this shot!! WOWOWWWWWW! nothing can beat this one, especially agnst the TIGERS…this is on the top 2 of dlsu’s history of buzzer beater!!(dont forget that shot was AND1!!!, tho dino missed the bonus shot!!
I kept on watching this, good memories sink in, and GOOSEBUMPS all over…ANIMO LA SALLE!!!
Many years past of being tagged as “BRIDESMAIDS” to Ust was so painful, and this win over them was one of the SWEETEST!!! Good old memories never fades…ANIMO LA SALLE!!!
i was also there in cuneta. when dino took the shot it’s like slow motion and at complete silence in the astrodome, until the ball went in and the whole lasalle crowd was jumping and shouting, wow simply amazing!
Dino Aldeguer, the archer with the biggest heart!
http://thelasalliansports.blogspot.com/2009/06/archer-with-biggest-heart.html
Has it been that long?! Wow! My blockmates and I were in a hotel room for a debut. The debut couldn’t start because (the debutant – our classmate was watching with us). We couldn’t leave during that tense moment, then swish! DINO FOR 3!!!! Our room suddenly became the loudest place in the hotel! We had 2 awesome celebrations that day. ANIMO!
I was there.
This finals was so sweet for us against UST.
they should put this game on dvd and sell them in every la salle bookstore