THAT dagger jumper from Jacob Cortez in the dying seconds of the Ateneo–La Salle rivalry game looked like something he had played out in his head a thousand times over as a kid.
And indeed, it was.
With the Green Archers protecting a slim 74-72 lead, the 22-year-old guard took the ball the length of the floor with 33 seconds left in regulation.
He calmly bled the clock, shook off Blue Eagle Waki Espina’s pesky defense, and glided into his sweet spot just inside the arc before rising for the jumper and letting it fly with 12.4 seconds to spare.
Cortez’s gutsy jumper pushed the lead to six, before Mike Phillips calmly knocked down two free throws to put the game to bed for good.
READ: Cortez shoots La Salle to Final Four while also shooing away Ateneo, FEU
That moment was straight out of Cortez’s childhood dreams, he is the son of school legend Mike Cortez, after all, a sequence he executed to perfection under the brightest lights and on the biggest stage.
“That shot, I’ve been doing that since I was a kid, counting down by myself in the gym. What best way to do it than in an Ateneo-La Salle game, in a crucial game,” he said post-game
“But what counted most was that second half altogether when we started to stick together, and that’s what really made us win.”
No more complications for La Salle
Of course, the pressure on Cortez and the Green Archers wasn’t limited to those frantic final seconds.
Even before tip-off, they knew the stakes: win and punch an outright ticket to the Final Four or slip into a grueling three-way playoff for survival.
But the key for Cortez to pull that shot off, as a wise head on young shoulders, was to feel the weight of the privilege of being put in such crunch time situations without dragging his confidence down.
As he put it, “During those crucial shots, I was just having fun. At the same time, we were still focused with the game. We like to preach that we like to play defense and play hard, but it’s fun to us.”
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