Depleted UST stuns La Salle in 3 sets for share of 3rd spot

MANILA, Philippines—Ailing and all, University of Santo Tomas needed only three sets to take down defending champion De La Salle, 25-20, 25-22, 25-17, in the UAAP Season 81 women’s volleyball tournament Wednesday at Filoil Flying V Centre in San Juan.

The Golden Tigresses, who played without injured star Milena Alessandrini, rolled to their third win in five games for a share of the third spot with Far Eastern University and La Salle.

Facing up against a shell-shocked La Salle side, the Golden Tigresses kept up their advances and built a 21-13 lead off of a 10-3 run after Cherry Rondina’s block on Jolina Dela Cruz.

Rondina then scored on a spike that bounced off two Lady Spikers that put the Golden Tigresses at the 24-17 match point just before an erroneous Desiree Cheng attempt sealed the victory for UST.

UST head coach Kung Fu Reyes said the team dedicated the win to the injured Alessandrini who suffered a knee injury on Saturday during UST’s match against Far Eastern University.

“This is certainly a big win for us and we’re also motivated because of Amiga,” said Reyes in Filipino. “We wantedto win the game against FEU but we really came up short so now the players were mentally and physically prepared that’s why that was the outcome.”

“I told them that we had to use Milena’s absence as motivation because it’s difficult to replace her 15, 17 points per game production so what we did was limit out errors.”

Alessandrini averaged 15.7 points through her first three games and UST did limit its errors to compensate for the firepower of the Season 80 Rookie of the Year.

UST, which averages 35 errors a game, managed to limit its faults to just 18 against La Salle.

Rondina was again UST’s leading scorer in the game with 19 points while rookie Eya Laure had 15 with Dimdim Pacres adding eight.

Dela Cruz, Norielle Ipac, and Aduke Ogunsanya had eight points apiece for the Lady Spikers.