St. Benilde Blazers. Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
After St. Benilde felt flat once again, this time losing to San Beda, 90-63, on Thursday, Coach Gabby Velasco could no longer contain his disappointment over his squad’s fifth straight loss.
While his team has experienced slow starts in the past, Velasco said this season is the worst so far since he took over for the Blazers.
“In my four years, this is the worst start I had with Benilde. The previous one was 0-3,” he said.
READ: NCAA: San Beda stays unscathed, rips winless Benilde
Though Velasco said his Blazers tried their best to at least match the intensity of the fancied Red Lions, their 36 turnovers proved to be their undoing.
“Today, I can say we were aggressive. In general, we were able to attack San Beda’s press and get lay-ups, the problem is there are times where we get lost and that’s where the turnovers happened,” he said.
“Nababa namin sa 15 yung lamang nila and without those turnovers baka bumaba pa sana to single-digits. In the end, the aggressiveness was there at hindi lang namin ma-finish and out turnovers also killed us.”
Not helping St. Benilde’s cause were the injuries on his big men Christian Fajarito just before the halftime break and Clement Leutcheu late in the game.
“Kanina na-sprain lang si Christian. He stepped on a foot kaya hindi na sya nakabalik. I asked him to pero masakit daw. Si Clement naman, there was a collision sa tuhod. Less severe yung kay Clement compared to Christian. Palagay ko by tomorrow or Sunday, okay na sya. They have six days to rest naman,” he said.
Velaso admits that he’s still struggling to find the right combination of players that will bring consistency for the Blazers as they eye their first win.
“We are expecting other guys to step-up. We are expecting people to get certain minutes. Unfortunately, it did not happen in the beginning, so I had to find a good combination,” he said. “I still have to look for who to start. Some get a lot of minutes, some just a little. Up to now, our problem is we still need to find the right combination and find the people who will step-up consistently.”
With a team full of rookies and sophomores, Velasco is hoping these losses, whether big or small, will help his players ripen in time to make an impact this season.
“I just hope that as we go along, magmamature din kami. We have to be mature quick even though we are young. We have to experience a lot and apply it in our next game. Ganun ang labanan dito, we just have to go on and go on. Hopefully, we still remain positive. We need to leave everything behind, learn from it, and then apply whatever we learned from the past to our next game.”