Far Eastern University’s narrative throughout the UAAP Season 80 women’s volleyball tournament was to get to the top two seed en route to a potential 30th title.
And when the Lady Tamaraws scored that sweet twice-to-beat advantage for their Final Four matchup against Ateneo, they knew that stopping at just that won’t be an option.
Captain Bernadeth Pons said they could never be complacent against the Lady Eagles despite FEU’s perk of needing to win just one game in the Final Four to advance to the championship round.
“Every night we keep reminding ourselves that we can never be complacent despite having that twice-to-beat advantage,” said Pons in Filipino Friday at FEU gym.
The Lady Tamaraws finished the eliminations with a 10-4 record for the second seed while the Lady Eagles settled for a 9-5 card at the third spot of the standings.
FEU needs to win just one game in its semifinals matchup against Ateneo to advance to the finals and face the winner between defending champion De La Salle and National University in the other Final Four bracket.
“Ateneo is a champion team and it won’t budge that easily,” said Pons who is on her final playing year. “That team will fight no matter what.”
“All of us needs to play well until the end, we won’t stop until the game is finished.”
Despite the close records of the two teams with only one game separating FEU and Ateneo after the eliminations, there is a wide distinction between the Lady Tamaraws and the Lady Eagles on how they closed out their respective elimination round campaigns.
FEU had one of the stronger finishes in the league as it ended its campaign on a four-game winning streak—only La Salle had a better run of eight unbeaten games to close the eliminations—while Ateneo lost its last two games.
Pons, although aware of the disparity, isn’t too keen on dwelling on how they finished the tournament’s preliminaries and instead looked at the semifinals as a landscape for the team that will execute better come game time.
“We still have to listen to the instructions coach [George Pascua] gives us,” said Pons. “We have to execute everything correctly because coach has the game plan and all we have to do is apply that so that we can maintain this momentum we have now.”