By Stella Oo/ABL

Jakarta, Sunday, February 21, 2010 – The inaugural ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) season drew to a close as the Philippine Patriots displayed their all-round supremacy on the hardwood to defeat Satria Muda BritAma 75-67 and earn a much-deserved 3-0 series sweep to claim the title of champions.

The emphasis of the entire season has been about the strength in depth of the Patriots and game three was no exception. While their dynamic scorer Gabe Freeman had one of his poorer shooting nights, his American counterpart Jason Dixon was simply unstoppable with 28 points and 12 rebounds.

That's not to belittle Freeman's effort either. He ended up with 17 points and 19 rebounds and played some simply suffocating defense on Alex Hartman, a key factor in the series win. In fact, the extent of Freeman's impact on this team cannot be overstated enough. Since he joined the team with two games to go in the regular season, the Patriots have been undefeated.

Freeman and Dixon are undoubtedly the league's most potent 1-2 punch and they showed their mettle again by comprehensively outplaying the Satria Muda import duo of Hartman and Nakiea Miller who finished with 14 and 13 points respectively.

After the Patriots had won the first two games, the series shifted to Jakarta where SMB coach Fictor Roring was hoping for a shift in momentum. The intensity and atmosphere generated by their home crowd seemed to lift the Indonesians as they stormed to an early nine-point lead at 14-5.

But their momentum was halted when Miller had to take a seat after being inadvertently poked in the eye by Patriots forward Jerwin Gaco while battling for a rebound. His absence gave the Patriots impetus to start mounting a comeback, which the champions duly obliged by looking for Dixon to establish his superiority inside.

Miller did return for the second quarter but at that point, Dixon had clearly found his rhythm torching the Indonesians for 12 markers in that crucial second period, mixing an array of inside moves and some deft outside shooting.

With a four-point lead at the half, the Patriots came out in the third quarter with more intensity, starting out the period with a 7-0 run and building an 11-point lead that SMB were simply unable to dig themselves out of.

Not that SMB gave up. They did everything possible to come back but in the end it was just too much firepower from the Patriots as they coasted home to an impressive victory and the inaugural ABL championship.

There has been a lot of mention about the imports in the series but a lot of credit has to go to local Indonesian Rony Gunawan who may have been his team's player of the series. He had strong efforts in the first two games and Game 3 was no exception as he finished with 20 points and 7 rebounds in a losing effort.

His effort kept SMB close and he should hold his head up high after establishing himself as a true quality basketball player and if SMB can add a few more pieces next year, they could go even further.

As for now, the moment belongs to the Patriots who have been the league's best team all season and have once again shown the Philippines' supremacy when it comes to basketball in Southeast Asia.

The league will undoubtedly go a long way towards closing the gap between the Philippines and the rest of the countries but that is still in the future. The present and the reality is that the Philippines have more basketball talent than the other countries and SMB can be proud of pushing the Patriots as hard as they did.

"This has been a fantastic start to our inaugural season and the league can only get stronger from here on out,” said Kuhan Foo, chief executive officer of the ABL.

“We've already made a huge impact with our games televised live across the South East Asia and being streamed live on the internet in Europe, the United States and North Asia. We ´re looking at adding more teams to the league and we are working closely with the South East Asian Basketball Association making this league stronger in its second season that will start in October this year," he added.

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