Finals Game 1: Sanatura 82 San Ramon 75

ARBA San Ramon beat six-time defending champ in a double overtime thriller at San Ramon on Sunday in the third and deciding game of Clausura. Forty-eight hours later they had to lace up their sneakers for the first game of the National Finals against our team. Talk about an emotional roller-coaster on a short turnaround.

Meanwhile, our team has been trying to recover mentally and physically from the disappointment of losing to Barva in the semi-finals in the deciding game. We put in some good practice sessions last week, sweating out those demons, trying to get ready for this series.

National Finals Preview

ARBA SAN RAMON celebrating the Clausura title.

As I've written before, the Costa Rican season is structured into two mini seasons. You have a winner for Apertura and Clausura portions of the season. Unless that happens to be the same team (as Barva did five of six times by my count), those winners meet in a National Final in a best of five series. We won the Apertura portion of the tourney, while San Ramon won the Clausura portion.

Game 1 Tuesday, August 14th Gimnasio Nacional
Game 2 Friday, August 17th San Ramon
Game 3 Sunday, August 19th Gimnasio Nacional
Game 4 Friday, August 24th San Ramon
Game 5 Sunday, August 26 TBD

Our team is finally at full strength. Actually, that's not 100% correct. Sebastian Lacayo is serving a two game suspension for arguing in Game 3 of the semifinals against Barva; I wonder how long the suspension would have been if he had actually done something. Aside from that suspension, we are mostly healthy for the first time in the Clausura tournament. Henry Martinez just got his mask to protect his facial injury.

San Ramon has a very skilled team; they have three players who have played D1 ball in the US, more than any other team in Costa Rica. They have the most rugged front court with Daniel Simmons, Jefney Anderson and high-flying Jerson Harris. When Darell St. Rose went down in the playoffs of Apertura, they brought in Greg Platter (Guard, Long Beach State) who's become one of the league's best players. Rounding out the lineup on the wings they have Kay Martinez and Amaurys Ripool, two long multifaceted players who can score in a variety of ways. They also have two of the league's best young players in Luis and Isaac Conejo, sons of famous Costa Rican goalkeeper Luis Gabelo Conejo. And to round things out, they have several players on the bench who can come in and play key minutes and hit big shots..

San Ramon has become the toughest place to play in the league. Their crowd is loud and boisterous, making noise the entire game. They've done such a great job of fostering community support (much kudos to Franklin). If the teams in this league did half as good a job, this would be a much better league overall.

Should be a fun series.

Clausura Semi-Finals: Sanatura vs Barva

Game 1: Franklyn Ferguson goes up against our interior defense.

Work has gotten in the way of blogging the last few weeks. We faced off against Barva in the semi-finals of Clausura. The first two games were tight affairs. Barva won the first game in San Joaquin de Flores. We won the second game in Escazu. Barva won the series in the third deciding game by an ample margin to move on to the Clausura Finals where they will face ARBA San Ramon.

We are left licking our wounds, waiting for the winner in the National Finals. San Ramon and Barva are squaring off today to determine the winner.

Here are some pictures from that semi final series.

Sanatura 58 Barva 69

Every game against the defending champ Barva had gone down to the wire, except for this one. With three losses in the Torneo de Clausura, Barva found itself in an unfamiliar place in third place in the standings heading towards the playoffs. This is the lowest they have been seeded in nine years. Going into Tuesday night's game, you could sense the urgency from Barva to get back to their winning ways.

Road Trip X2: at Limon

Gimnasio Eddy Bermudez, Limon

Last Sunday, our team got back on the bus to play at Limon for a Sunday afternoon game. By virtue of its location on the Caribbean coast, Limon is easily the hottest venue where we play regularly. Normally, the games are scheduled at night, but with this special Sunday schedule, the game was at 4 pm, which meant an even hotter gym than usual (reminded me of Nicaragua type heat). We pulled out of Desamparados shortly before noon for the second leg of our road trip from hell.

Road Trip X2: at PZ (Part 1)

Riots in Limon over the JAPDEVA strike last month led to our game getting re-scheduled. Little did we know at the time that it would get rescheduled for this past weekend, on the Sunday immediately after our trip to Perez Zeledon. That meant over a weekend we would log 250 kilometers round trip to Perez Zeledon (six hours on a bus) on Friday night and then 320 kilometers to Limon on Sunday (another six hours on the bus). Two tough road trips, two wins.

Sanatura 85 San Ramon 107

Greg Platter slicing through the defense

After a week of family vacation, I came back to a very important game: at home against San Ramon with first place on the line. In what is clearly becoming a three team race this season, this game had a lot of implications for the upcoming Clausura playoffs: home court, bracket position and momentum. One team showed up primed for this important matchup. Unfortunately, that was not our team.