MANILA, 27 February 2004 — Danny Seigle, the streak-shooting San Miguel forward, is back from injury.
And with Seigle in harness, there’s no reason for the Jong Uichico-mentored Beermen not to do better this season in their bid to end a two-year title drought in the pro league.
Seigle has never played a game since he suffered a torn Achilles ligament in an exhibition game by the Busan-bound RP team in 2002. He skipped the entire 2002 All-Filipino and the whole 2003 campaign.
Seigle, younger brother of Ginebra’s slotman Danny, led the Beermen to eight finals appearances, three straight championships and a total of five titles.
The Beermen made a return trip to the finals of last year’s Reinforced Conference although Seigle was still recuperating from a surgery in the United States.
In his first three seasons in the league, the 6-foot-6 forward out of Wagner U averaged 19.4 points, 6.4 rebounds and 2.5 assists. He was going great guns for the national team until he suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament that sidelined him for over a year-and-a-half.
Surely, Seigle’s comeback can only pump up the Beermen who have gone without a title since they captured the team’s first All-Filipino title under Uichico three years ago.
Aside from seigle, the Beermen are parading an imposing lineup made up of Danny Ildefonso, Dorian Pena, Nic Belasco, Dondon Hontiveros, Olsen Racela, Boybits Victoria and Dale Singson, a team that could well take on any team on any given night.
It’s no surprise then that, this early, the consensus among coaches is that the Beermen are among the teams to beat in this season’s PBA war that kicked off this week with the Fiesta Cup at the Araneta Coliseum.
The Beermen will parade former Seattle Supersonic Art Long as their import at the PBA Fiesta Cup. The right choice of import could be a major factor in determining the team’s fortune this campaign.
The San Miguel ballclub has kept its team intact for the 2004 season.
Ildefonso, a two-time Most Valuable Player (MVP) winner, has renewed his contract with the team, inking a lucrative contract worth 14.7 million pesos for the next three and a half years.
His move reaffirmed his status as the Beermen’s franchise player.
The 6-foot-5 slotman from National University is guaranteed to receive the maximum monthly pay of 350,000 pesos until June 2007, ending talks about the possibility of trading away the talented forward.
At the tender age of 27, Ildefonso is already on the verge of greatness.
He made sure of that when he bagged the coveted MVP award in the league for the second straight year in 2001 to complete what could well be the most dominant year by a PBA player ever. He also became the sixth player to win the MVP award at least twice.
The pride of Urdaneta, Pangasinan, is standing at the top of the world yet again.
He won the award in runaway fashion against four of his teammates to carve his name in the niche of league history as only the third player to win it for two straight seasons, following William “Bogs” Adornado and Alvin Patrimonio.
Adornado did the trick in 1975-76, while Patrimonio won it back-to-back in 1993 and 1994. Nobody had come near the total point output Ildefonso accumulated in the season to run away with the most prestigious award in a player’s career.
Indeed, the 1998 Rookie of the Year awardee won it in the most lopsided derby ever since the league’s inception in 1975.
Uichico said with Ildefonso staying put and Seigle back in the lineup, the Beermen are competitive again.
Earlier, Uichico gave Victoria the go-signal to look for another team following the team’s acquisition of Dale Singson from Shell.
The multi-titled bench taskmaster had told Victoria that the player may get lesser playing time on the entry of Singson.
The Beermen acquired Singson from Shell in exchange for the Beermen’s seventh pick in the recent PBA rookie draft. Shell then dealt the pick plus Eddie Laure to Purefoods for Billy Mamaril.
Uichico saw no more reason to pick in the recent draft since the team has been loaded with players in all positions.
Meanwhile, the shakeup in the management staff of all four teams of San Miguel Corp. may have nothing to do with it, but player rosters of San Miguel Beer, Barangay Ginebra, Purefoods and Coca-Cola were completed just as the reshuffle on top of the ball clubs were done.
