Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
Ben Mbala was man enough to acknowledge that you can’t win every day and you can’t be champions every season.
“You won’t always be a winner. Sometimes you just have to be on the side of the losers. Unluckily, we were on the side of the losers,” he said after La Salle fell to Ateneo in three grueling games in the men’s basketball Finals.
Despite the domination of the the two-time UAAP MVP this past two years in the league, cracks in the Green Archers armor surfaced in the series as the Blue Eagles got back at their rivals.
Mbala gave it his all for La Salle in the winner-take-all Game 3, pouring 19 points, 14 rebounds, three blocks, and two steals in the title-clincher.
However, Ateneo just wanted the championship much more as Isaac Go’s late-game heroics sealed the 88-86 victory.
“It has to be a learning experience for me. They played better as a team. They stuck to their game plan,” he said. “Meanwhile, we didn’t get to play our game and we didn’t have our rhythm. We just played within the flow and we took a lot of bad shots, turned the ball over when it was the most important.”
Despite failing to complete the back-to-back title romp, the 22-year-old center is proud of how his side fought through the course of the season.
“I told my teammates, ‘Congrats, you guys gave your best.’ I told them that you can’t just learn by winning, you can also learn by losing. This is a situation that you have to learn by losing and I take it as a man,” he said.
As for his own future, Mbala said that he’s still mulling his options if he’ll return for his final year for the Green Archers next season.
“I still have one more year. I need to talk my school and then we’ll figure it out,” he said.