CREAMLINE is again on the cusp of volleyball immortality.
One win separates it from achieving a feat no team has ever done - complete a Premier Volleyball League Grand Slam which means winning the All-Filipino, Invitational, and the Reinforced championships in one season.
It's not the first time that the Cool Smashers will be knocking on the door of greatness, nor the second. This will be their third time and their avid fans are wondering: will it be lucky on this third try?
Only Cignal or Kurashiki Ablaze stand in the way of Creamline's bid for immortality. Besides the Grand Slam, a win will also give the Cool Smashers their 10th title in the PVL, further cementing their position as the best volleyball team in the land.
READ: Nothing more to prove for Creamline as Grand Slam nears
Grand Slams are synonymous with PBA greatness. It's been done just five times in the country's top professional basketball league over a period of 49 years, particularly Crispa (1976 and 1983), San Miguel (1989), Alaska (1996), and San Mig Coffee (2013-14).
In the seven-year-old PVL, but only in its fourth season as a pro league, Creamline nearly completed a Grand Slam twice and it happened the last two years.
But as previously noted, Creamline fell short, proving the adage that even the best sometimes could not close the deal when it matters most.
How it happened is chronicled here.
2022: Creamline’s PVL Finals streak snapped
Coming off two hardfought title runs in the Open and Invitational Conferences, only the season-ending Reinforced Conference stood in Creamline’s way of a Grand Slam.
After a heartbreaking end to the last edition of import-laden play in 2019, the vengeful Cool Smashers had the title in their sights with redemption also in mind.
Creamline capped the preliminary round with a league-best seven wins in eight matches, with a five-setter to now-defunct F2 Logistics being its only defeat.
Securing the top seed didn’t weigh as much in that particular conference as the semifinals were played in a single-round robin format, where the top two would advance to the best-of-three finals and the bottom two to battle for third.
Led by the conference’s First Best Outside Hitter Alyssa Valdez and Best Setter Jia de Guzman, Creamline began the semis with a statement sweep win of Petro Gazz.
They were left shaken up, however, by a stunning four-set loss to Cignal which jeopardized their bid for an eighth straight PVL Finals appearance at the time.
Despite winning its semis finale against Chery Tiggo, the five-set result gave Creamline an inferior match points haul even as it shared identical 2-1 records with Cignal and Petro Gazz.
- CIGNAL: 2-1 (6 points; 1.750 set ratio)
- PETRO GAZZ: 2-1 (6 points; 1.500 set ratio)
- CREAMLINE: 2-1 (5 points: 1.400 set ratio)
- CHERY TIGGO: 0-3 (1 point: 0.222 set ratio)
While Creamline retained its podium streak, one still active to this day at 16 straight top three finishes, the shock semis result ended its four-year, seven-conference run of making it to the PVL Finals where it went 5-2.
Adding insult to injury was Valdez hurting her right knee in the bronze-medal clincher that sidelined her for nearly a year.
Petro Gazz won the 2022 Reinforced Conference title in a two-game series sweep of Cignal for the franchise’s second PVL championship.
2023: The service ace that shocked a dynasty
It was a rather different story for Creamline on how its second Grand Slam bid was foiled just a year after its first attempt fell flat.
While they managed to win two of three conferences in 2023, it was the second conference which Creamline missed out on in the most excruciating way possible.
The PVL staged two All-Filipino Conferences split by a midseason Invitational Conference featuring foreign guest team Kurashiki Ablaze from the third tier of the Japan V.League and Vietnamese side Kinh Bac Bac Ninh.
The league’s second-ever Invitationals had a unique format as the preliminaries saw the then-11-team field divided in pools of five and six that underwent single-round robin play.
Only the top two teams from each pool advanced to another single-round robin, but the semifinals that time around also featured two foreign guest teams.
Creamline went on to be the only unbeaten team in prelims play, but had its unbeaten run snapped by Kurashiki in four sets in the semis.
Kurashiki and Creamline finished 1-2 in the single-round semis to set up a winner-take-all championship match.
In a game led by the Japanese side for the most part, Creamline overcame 0-1 and 1-2 set holes to force a fifth-set tiebreak.
Up 13-12 in Set 5, the Cool Smashers were in the driver’s seat in a back-and-forth contest.
It would all be negated by three unanswered points from the Ablaze.
First were back-to-back kills from Tanabe Saki, who had 10 in the night, followed by a service ace from 1st Best Outside Spiker Tamaru Asaka that touched the backcourt line ever-so slightly.
Creamline thought it was out and fired one last challenge to put Kurashiki’s on-court celebrations on pause, but the challenge was unsuccessful.
Hence, a last-gasp stroke of luck to cap a hardfought battle saw Kurashiki become the PVL’s first foreign team to win a championship and deny Creamline's Grand Slam bid.
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