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HOT DOGGS LAY CLAIM TO AL CHIP | | AL ALL-DREAM LEAGUE HONORS
How about that?
Finish dead last in your conference and win the championship?
Who says deadbeats don’t get anywhere???
The DoGGs, who finished in last place in the Manila Conference this season (they were 5-3 but lost tiebreakers with Moneyball and SKWD), knocked off Queens Elite on Thursday, 67-62, in a game that pitted ordinary against subordinary (QE finished 3-5 in the regular season), but wound down extraordinarily.
Basically, the game was a microcosm of the DoGGs’ entire season.
We are sitting here today scratching our heads at the fact that at one point during the regular season, back on October 11th, after the DoGGs lost to Moneyball, they dropped their third straight game and sat at 1-3.
At that point, nothing was right in the DoGG world. They were reeling and the days of dominance by a team featuring guys named Tony Hu, Stan Yeung, Quincy Tso, Eddie Wang and David Cheng (Cruisers in disguise) seemed like they were done.
Ah, how quickly people are to give up in this what have you done for me lately society.
Ah, how quickly things can change on a dime.
After the Moneyball loss, the DoGGs had a do-or-die game against the top team at the time, The Legion, in which if they lost, it was pretty much their season. Fall to 1-4, and the writing was on the wall.
Well, in that game, not only did the DoGGs do and not die, they turned their ship around for the entire season, refusing to pull into the harbor until winning the chip.
Tso, Hu, and Wang combined to score 70 points that night in a statement game that said: “We DoGGs ain't playing dead and we ain't rollin' over for nobody!”
From that point on, the DoGGs won the rest of their regular season games and then entered the playoffs with what would prove to be a date with destiny.
They hardly tore through the post-season, they won 4 games by an average of just 6.75 points, including one that went to double OT, and they lost a game to Queens in the first semifinals at the buzzer after Charles Zheng couldn’t clinch it at the line.
But good DoGGs find a way to smell it out and the fellas found ways to pull it out each and every time they had to and they collectively saved Zheng from feeling too badly as they bounced back with a double OT win against The Legion in a game that Yeung had 9 dimes in. Hu was big that night, but Wang won it for them in the second OT.
From that win, with the knowledge that they would have one more game together with the retiring Cheng, and with the sting of the buzzer beating loss to Queens two weeks prior, the DoGGs dug deep one more time, after falling behind by 17-6 early on, and came from behind to get by Queens at the wire to take home yet another chip courtesy of the Cruisers’ core.
Congratulations, Tony, Eddie, Quincy, Stan, David, Charles, and Ken Lam. This one wasn’t easy and it was well-deserved considering all that you’ve gone through this season.
We never had any doubt. Even when you were 1-3. (Wink, wink.)
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