DEFENDING champion La Salle hurdled a gritty University of Santo Tomas side last Wednesday night, enabling the Green Archers to improve to 8-1 for the solo lead in the 87th UAAP basketball tournament.
This hardly surprised La Salle coach Topex Robinson, who said his squad is determined to keep its hold on the top in its bid to annex a second straight crown.
“We set high standards, we really make sure kasi iyon nga iyong challenge, not catching anybody, you know, wala kang hinahabol so we always try to challenge ourselves,” Robinson said. “Sabi ko nga winning really hides a lot of flaws so we’ll make sure that we’ll spend a lot of time fine-tuning whatever mistake that we made. Wala naman kaming ibang puwedeng gawin right now and we don’t really have control of what our next opponents will do.
“But we have control of how we’re gonna approach that again. So, a valuable lesson from this game, and then we’ll just have to go back to it and make sure that these things will happen again, we cannot avoid it, but we should know from this experience what to do,” he added.
Robinson spoke after his wards scored a 94-87 overtime win over the Growling Tigers, thanks mainly to the career-best 29 points of reigning MVP Kevin Quiambao that he laced with nine rebounds and three assists.
Mike Phillips also had 16 markers and 13 boards while Raven Gonzales added 11 and four for the Archers.
Robinson has fired another challenge to the Taft-based crew–it needs its A-Game against Adamson University when they clash tomorrow, Saturday, at the UST Quadricentennial Pavilion.
“We know that Adamson is one of the best defensive teams in the league right now. Their numbers really show that they know how to play defense. Again, a well-coached program so we just have to make sure that we come in prepared and confident knowing that we have to do things also to give Adamson,” Robinson said. “Again, sa amin lang we don’t really look at where we are right now, but we’re focused on where we are headed. You know, iyon iyong lagi namin iniisip and we cannot rest right now because these are gonna be opportunities na baka pagsisihan namin sa huli.
“We know that it’s gonna be a tough one on Saturday and we’ll try to be prepared mentally and physically, especially that it is gonna be a 48-hour preparation so sa amin, it’s moving forward and learning from this experience. We’re excited, especially we’re gonna play in UST so it’s gonna be fun.”
Whether the Archers can win it all anew will be known before the end of the year.
