An opening ceremony as grand as the one the 81st Season of the UAAP had needed an athletic endeavor to match the grandeur – and luckily, there was one cager who delivered.
After Filipino hearthrob James Reid, K-Pop star Minzy, and NBA champion and Most Valuable Player Steph Curry opened the weekend, Adamson University Soaring Falcons’ Jerrick Ahanmisi gladly closed it.
From highlight plays to clutch buckets, Ahanmisi had it all as he led the Soaring Falcons to a 74-70 shocker over defending champions Ateneo de Manila University to be hailed as the season’s first Chooks-to-Go-SMART/UAAP Press Corps Player of the Week.
The Filipino-Nigerian edged out UP’s Juan Gomez de Liaño, NU’s Dave Ildefonso, and FEU’s Arvin Tolentino for the weekly plum handed by scribes from print and online covering the beat.
Without a doubt, Adamson wouldn’t have pulled off the upset if not for the efforts of Ahanmisi, who put up 23 points, on 8-of-17 shooting, while grabbing four rebounds.
The third-year swingman’s offensive production was the highest for the opening weekend, and included a mesmerizing buzzer-beating half court shot that gave Adamson a 40-39 lead heading into the halftime break.
His highlights, however, weren’t just for the early parts of the game, as he had his hand in Adamson’s crunch time sets.
With the game tied, Ahanmisi was given the isolation play off of head coach Franz Pumaren’s timeout, and delivered with a clutch layup that gave his team a 70-68 lead with 1:09 left to play.
The Soaring Falcons have waited for this moment for months.
“The coaches have been preparing us a lot and preparing us very well in this game. We started scouting them like months and months ago before this game,” disclosed the junior guard. “The coaches did a good job and also whoever was on the court they played one-hundred percent every time they went in. I’m glad we came out with the win.”
Not long after, they finished the job in their first conquest of the Blue Eagles since 2016.
