Petron volleybelles clinch 5th over Cagayan

Cignal HD gained a morale-boosting win going into the men’s finals with a 25-18, 25-22, 25-21 rout of Instituto Estetico Manila yesterday in the Philippine Superliga All-Filipino Conference volleyball tournament at Cuneta Astrodome.

Already assured of a berth in the championship prior to the game, the HD Spikers unleashed their full might in scoring their sixth win in eight matches.

Howard Mojica and Adam Daquer paced Cignal with 14 and 12 points, respectively, while Edmar Sanchez added eight as the HD spikers dealt the Phoenix Volley Masters their fifth loss in eight games.

Cignal is set to face PLDT-Air Force, which is playing Systema at presstime, for the men’s title Saturday.

Earlier, Dindin Santiago bowed out of the tournament by banging in 30 points as Petron blasted Cagayan Valley, 25-22, 25-19, 25-23, to  clinch fifth place in the women’s division.

Santiago, the league’s top scorer in her rookie season, slammed 21 kills, made six blocks and dropped three aces for the Power Attackers who started with a 3-0 run only to flounder late in the conference.

“I don’t know what happened in between, but our coach told us ‘we won our first three matches but we failed to get our goal, now we should win our last game at least,’” said Santiago in Filipino.

Petron pulled off nine blocks against four by their opponents while dropping seven aces.

“We just tried to be positive about it,” said Petron coach George Pascua, referring to the dip in their game midway in the conference. “A lot of things happened, like injuries, and the long layoff which broke our momentum.

Libero Jen Reyes accounted for 21 of Petron’s 30  receptions while  Mary Grace Masangkay keyed the flow of offense with 30 excellent sets. Carmina Aganon added nine points for Petron.