Story by Erwin Wong and Koh Yizhe/Red Hoops. Photos by Vanessa Lim/Red Hoops.

Singapore Indoor Stadium, Wednesday, January 6, 2010 – In a Singapore Slingers season usually headlined by the stellar play of American imports Kyle Jeffers and Michael LeBlanc, it was local lad Steven Khoo who took his turn as an unlikely hero.

Steven scored six unanswered points in a 20-second span late in the fourth quarter to seal a 67-59 Slinger victory over the league-leading Philippine Patriots team in the 12th round of ASEAN Basketball League (ABL).

With less than two minutes to play and the Slingers clinging on to a three-point lead, Steven converted on a baseline jumper to make it 59-54. One technical free throw later, he found himself wide open at the top of the key beyond the arc, and coolly sank his first trey of the season to jack the lead up to nine to put the Patriots away for good.

“I had no idea about it, but I was open. I had to shoot it,” mused Steven, when asked to describe the dagger shot.

That sealed yet another comeback victory by the Slingers, whose previous three victories have now come after incurring double-digit deficits. The Slingers, notoriously slow starters who have trailed after the first or second quarter in eight of their eleven games this season, were cold again in the early stages of the match.

Val Acuna, Robert Wainwright and Christian Coronel all hit from beyond the arc to contribute to a huge 17-5 Patriot run to start the game, while Marcus Ng and Jeffers scored the Slingers’ only two baskets of the quarter as the home team shot an ignominious 2 of 14 from the field in the opening 10 minutes, and trailed 21-9 after one quarter.

Elmer Espiritu’s two free throws extended the advantage to 14, but the trademark Slinger run got off and running, with LeBlanc leading the way. He missed all five attempts in the first period but scored almost at will in the second, chalking up 15 of his game-high 21 points on six of seven shooting.

LeBlanc’s jumper opened a 9-0 run to cut the lead to five, and then he produced two clutch plays at the end of the half to tie the game. He drew contact from Wainwright on a successful lay up and converted the three-point play, and after stealing the Patriots inbounds pass with 10 seconds to go in the half, rebounded his own missed free throw to score and level the game at 29 apiece. The Slingers held their opponents scoreless for the final three minutes of the half, as LeBlanc single-handedly hauled his team back into contention.

“I was trying to relate to my teammates to stay focused and not to worry about the scoreboard. It doesn’t matter if we are down or up, we still have to play hard and just try to execute. If we do that and be consistent, we know we will catch up and have a real shot at the game,” said LeBlanc, who had 17 points and seven rebounds at the break.

Backup point guard Wong Wei Long praised LeBlanc’s effort, which was his first 20-point game in a month. He said, “I think what he did in this game was great, especially in the second quarter. After all the injuries, shingles and other external hindrances, he is really on the way back to form.”

It was still level after the third period too, as the Slingers managed to muster their first lead all game long and opened up a five-point advantage with LeBlanc’s two free throws, but that was quickly erased in a ding-dong, see-saw battle which saw consecutive lead changes late in the quarter.

Jason Dixon, who led the Patriots with 21 points, two off his season-high, scored his team’s final eight points of the period after muscling his way inside the paint and making multiple trips to the line. His rim-rattling dunk from a Coronel feed gave his team a 45-42 lead, but the Slingers would have the last word of the quarter as Michael Wong found the mark from behind the arc to make it a one-quarter game.

The Slingers again scored the opening basket of the quarter with Jeffers’ spinning lay up, and opened a 55-49 lead midway through the period after Michael Wong’s three-point play – part of an eight point, 3 of 3 shooting night for the Slinger co-captain.

Dixon answered back with a three-point play of his own with 100 seconds to play, but that merely set the stage for Steven’s entrance into the game as he came in for Marcus who fouled out on that play, and performed the late-game heroics which has caused his star to rise and earn plaudits from his coach and team mates alike.

“I cannot say enough about Steven,” said Slinger coach Frank Arsego. “In games like that, you look for a hero, and we’ve got our hero. He got an unsportsmanlike foul (on him), came down and made the free throw, shot in the corner, and hit that big open shot at the front, and got to the foul line, and rebounded and just competed.”

An ecstatic Arsego continued, beaming with pride, “It should be on the front page of the paper, ‘Steven Khoo gets Singapore over the line.’ It was fantastic.”

LeBlanc added to the growing list of tributes, saying, “I don’t like to single out players, but Steven played out of his mind! Not just on the offensive end, and he did some great things on offense, but he made a couple of big rebounds and played good defense.”

Steven, who came into the game with season totals of 12 points and 7 rebounds but had 8 and 6 today alone, was modest when asked whether he thought of himself as a hero. He said, “(I’m) not really actually (a hero). We win as a team. We all played like a team today.”

The morale-boosting victory over the Patriots means that the Slingers are the first team to have a better head-to-head record against the ABL leaders, who, with their full squad and deep roster, were widely expected to blow right by the Slingers. This was not lost on coach Arsego.

“That’s something to be very, very proud of in our first season against a country that has a very strong culture, and they’re proud of that. We achieved my personal goal, and that was to send a message to the rest of the league that the Slingers are not done with. And even if we may have lost this game, just the way we fought and played and stuck to a game plan, showed me that there was enough left for us to go through the rest of the season and really be strong.”

He continued, grinning widely, “(It was an) outstanding performance. To have the number one team coming into your home gym with a very impressive roster, and for us to come together collectively as a team, I’m the proudest man in Singapore. You can quote me on that!”

Both teams will face the KL Dragons as their next opponents, in the space of two days. The Patriots will play in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, January 9, while the third-placed Slingers face the Dragons two days later in the former’s final home game of the regular season.

Quarter by Quarter Scores
Slingers vs Patriots
1st Q: 9-21
2nd Q: 20-8
3rd Q: 16-16
4th Q: 22-14

Philippine Patriots Game Box Score

Singapore Slingers Game Box Score

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