by rick olivares
In their second ever game of Season 73 of the UAAP, the University of the East Red Warriors and the University of Santo Tomas faced off with the latter taking an 80-67 win after seizing the 3rd quarter.
At the start of the second round, the two teams went at it again at the Araneta Coliseum. Although this time, it ended with a different result.
The Red Warriors seized control of the match with a big third quarter to stave off the Growling Tigers for a 75-65 win for their second in eight games.
With UE up 40-38 in the mid-third quarter, Warriors swingman Paul Lee led a three-on-one fastbreak. He dished off to a wide-open Lucas Tagarda who promptly missed a point blank shot. Teammate Ken Acibar picked up the rebound and slammed it home. Except that it rimmed out.
It was these types of broken plays that signaled their downfall for much of the first round. But this time around, they gathered their wits about them as they went on a scorching 16-4 run that was highlighted with an alley-oop slam by Acibar off a pass by Lee. Acibar redeemed himself by scoring seven points and pulling down four rebounds in that stretch. “Nainis ako sa sarili ko,” said the lanky forward after the game. “Na-challenge ako.”
The Warriors played a more relaxed and composed game as they didn’t let UST’s constantly changing defense ruffle their feathers. When Lee was in the game, the Tigers played man-to-man. When he was out, they played a 2-3 zone.
Guarded by five different Tigers, Lee, rather than force the issue, let himself shoot within the flow of the game and played facilitator. The result was 16 points for Lee to go with 8 assists and 7 rebounds. But the more important statistic was victory number two. But the win came at a price. Slotman Sam Razon landed awkwardly with three minutes left in the first quarter and quite possibly sustained a knee injury.
Jess Tanchangco, UE team manager and UE’s Marketing Director said that “Razon possibly sustained an ACL. It doesn’t look good though.”
Lee had plenty of help from graduating guard James Martinez and forward JM Noble. Martinez fired 20 points including four of nine triples. He scored 13 points in the second half including 10 in the payoff quarter. Noble in the meantime chipped in 6 points, 5 rebounds and 2 blocked shots in 18 minutes.
“He (Noble) exceeded my expectations.” Lauded UE coach Lawrence Chongson.
It was a sorry loss for UST. In a pre-game interview, Tigers head coach Pido Jarencio said that his had hoped to correct the flaws of their first round results. “I told them that the first round was a learning process. Ang importante na matuto kami sa mga mali namin. And yung summa total ng mga talo naming ay yung mga turnovers. In their loses, they would turn the ball over at least 20 times a game.
In their second round tiff with the Red Warriors, they had only 18 turnovers to UE’s 20 while ruling the battle of the boards 43-36. But UE’s ace was its patience and willingness to pass the ball around. The Red Warriors had 19 assists. The spread the wealth offense, as dictated by Lee, saw the Recto-based team shoot a blistering 51.8% from the field.
“Sana tuloy tuloy na ‘to. I cannot say that we have solved our problems until we have won all our remaining games,” said Chongson.
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