Season 72 MVP: Tiger Ababou is king of the UAAP jungle

His consistency and steadfast performance all throughout the double-round eliminations paid dividends for University of Santo Tomas team skipper Dylan Ababou as he copped the seniors' division Most Valuable Player award for the UAAP Season 72 basketball tournament. The 6-foot-3 Ababou, the league’s leading scorer and most consistent performer among the Tigers, posted averages of 18.9 points and 7.1 rebounds per game and boasted of a 40.4 percent marksmanship emerge as the runaway winner for the plum. The lone UAAP player to score at least 10 points in all their 14 games in the eliminations, Ababou nosed out Ateneo’s ace slotman and Season 71 MVP Rabeh Al-Hussaini and Far Eastern University’s top center Aldrech Ramos for the most coveted individual award. “Naalala ko pa noon nasa team B pa lang ako ng UST, sinabi sa akin ni Danny Pribdhas na magiging MVP ka rin. Hindi ko nga alam kung bakit n’ya sinabi yun pero hindi ko pinansin yun, ngayon nagkatotoo," said Ababou, only the second UST player after former teammate Jervy Cruz (2007) to win season MVP in the last 14 years. And now the reigning MVP sets his sights on the bigger prize – the UAAP championship. Ababou and his fourth-ranked UST teammates face a tall order, though, as they face defending champion and No. 1 seed Ateneo in the Final Four, needing to beat Al-Hussaini and Co. twice to advance into the finals. “Magiging kumpleto sana ang kasiyahan ko kung makakapasok kami sa finals at mananalo kami," said Ababou, who was only a second stringer when the Tigers captured their last UAAP crown in 2006 at the expense of a Chris Tiu-led Ateneo. A member of the SMART Gilas Pilipinas team tasked to earn a slot to the 2012 Olympics, bested Al-Hussaini who averaged 16.5 points and 7.1 rebounds per game and his fellow Gilas stalwart Ramos, the only player to post a double-double average of 11.5 points and 11.6 rebounds this season. - GMANews.TV