Third time’s the charm

A QUICK look at Thirdy Ravena’s University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) accolades underscores just how prolific his career has been. On the individual level, he has a UAAP Juniors’ Most Valuable Player (MVP) trophy and a pair of UAAP Seniors’ Mythical Five selections, finishing in the top 10 of the MVP race every year since 2016. But his crowning achievement is his championships in UAAP Seasons 80 and 81, where he won the Finals MVP in each of those two title series.

Thirdy’s award count is historically significant. His current Finals MVP haul of two is tied with Arwind Santos, Jeron Teng, and Nico Salva for most ever since the league started handing out the award in 2001, meaning that Thirdy has the chance to make UAAP history with another Finals MVP plum in the 2019 UAAP Finals.

This is why the graduating forward’s place in the annals of Ateneo and UAAP basketball history is unquestionable. Thirdy will hang up his jersey as one of the greatest to ever don the Blue and White—an incredible conclusion to his collegiate career considering how it started. His road to success was one that was marked with pressure, struggle, and disappointment—much of these he endured until early in his Seniors career.

Back in 2014, there was a lot of hype surrounding Thirdy’s jump to the Blue Eagles in UAAP Season 77. He was coming off a sensational senior year in the Blue Eaglets as the UAAP Season 76 Juniors’ MVP. The 6’3” forward was set to bolster a championship-contending squad that featured star forward Chris Newsome, fellow blue-chip recruit Arvin Tolentino, and most notably, his older brother and the face of the team, Kiefer Ravena.

Thirdy Ravena with his brother, Kiefer, before a game in UAAP Season 77. File Photo by Francine A. Bharwani

While the team enjoyed a first-place finish in the elimination round, the younger Ravena disappointed. In his limited 7.2 minutes per game, he averaged a lowly 1.4 points and 1.6 rebounds per game and shot just 28% from the field. Thirdy’s career then took another downward turn in the season that followed, as he was deemed academically ineligible to play for the Blue Eagles in UAAP Season 78. This notably deprived him of the chance for another shot at glory in his older brother’s final year.

For a time, the young forward saw that season as his worst. Nowadays, Thirdy sees it as a year well-spent. He says that the time away from the team enabled him to have his best year in terms of academics, bulk-up his body, and polish his game even further.

“That second year was good for me. Some people think it was bad [because] it was the last playing year of my brother [Kiefer] and I wasn’t able to play with him,” Thirdy recalls. “But for me, I actually had time to work on myself and on my craft both on and off the court.”

Thirdy Ravena taking a three in a UAAP Season 77 game versus Adamson University. File Photo by Ryan Y. Racca.

Thirdy also had to deal with the pressure that stemmed from the success of his father Bong, who was a two-time Philippine Basketball Association All-Star, and his aforementioned brother Kiefer, a two-time UAAP MVP. While Thirdy saw these familial pressures as motivation, it also became a source of self-doubt. Things changed in 2016 with the arrival of Head Coach Tab Baldwin, who helped Thirdy turn the corner and channel the pressure in a positive manner.

“[Coach Tab] really changed my focus. He talked to me about understanding pressure, where to put it in my life, how I can make the most about that pressure,” Thirdy says. “He was one of the reasons I became more confident in myself.”

Thirdy credits the multi-award winning mentor for helping him rely less on his physical tools. “Before I met Coach Tab, I thought I could get away with my athleticism,” he says. Under Baldwin’s tutelage, Thirdy began to take more of a mental approach to the game instead of trying to outjump and outmuscle the much more physically-advanced opponents in the Seniors’ division.

Behind a renewed sense of how to play the game—and a much bigger, leaner frame—Thirdy found the formula to set him up for success in his UAAP career. He was a completely different player when he returned to the playing court in UAAP Season 79. Thirdy led the Blue and White to a surprise Finals berth and runner-up finish versus the dominant La Salle en route to his first Mythical Five award.

Thirdy followed up his 2016 breakout season with an even better UAAP Season 80 campaign, where he finished second in the MVP race and more importantly, drove Ateneo to their first title since 2012. Thirdy led the way in all three games, capped off by a 17-point, eight-rebound performance in Game 3 on his way to his first Finals MVP award. He earned championship-Finals MVP a second time in UAAP Season 81,  punctuated by a career-best 38 points in Game 2 of the UAAP Finals.

In Season 82, Thirdy and the Blue Eagles finished with the first 14-0 slate in the program’s history to garner an automatic bid to the finals. After his 32-point showing in Ateneo’s Game 1 rout of UST, the storybook ending for Thirdy’s career is on the horizon.

But Thirdy’s not thinking about any of that. He remains focused on the task at hand, which is to win another championship and complete the three-peat. “Right now, I have no emotions. Honestly I’m trying to avoid it as much as I can [because] we still have games to go and I can’t be all emotional about something that’s not yet finished,” he says.

Thirdy will likely depart from the Blue Eagles as the defining player of this Ateneo basketball era. He was never as polished offensively as his older brother and benefited immensely by playing under the Tab Baldwin, but he excelled, amidst the pressures and early struggles, to become the best version of himself—a version that laid waste to the rest of the UAAP. We are down to the last one or two games of Thirdy Ravena’s UAAP career. Enjoy it while it lasts.

http://www.theguidon.com/1112/main/2019/11/third-times-the-charm/