Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
ANTIPOLO CITY—De La Salle’s seemingly impenetrable fortress has started to show its cracks.
The Lady Spikers rarely lose a season series and they don’t often drop their third game until the final match or two of the tournament but such is the predicament of the defending champions in the UAAP Season 81 women’s volleyball tournament.
University of the Philippines bamboozled La Salle in straight sets, 25-16, 26-24, 25-19, to get the season sweep and that’s a feat only Alyssa Valdez’ Ateneo squad back in Season 77 did.
The Lady Spikers dropped to a 5-3 record, already surpassing their number of losses from Season 80, and head coach Ramil De Jesus admitted that his players are not in the highest of moods.
“Morale is down, really down,” said De Jesus in Filipino Sunday at Ynares Center here. “We’ll know tomorrow (Monday) what we will do about this.”
De Jesus added that their single biggest mistake in the game was throwing points away especially from the service line.
The Lady Spikers committed 37 total errors and 17 of those were from the service line.
“I told them that their opponents won’t give them the win, they will have to do it on their own, said De Jesus. “Of course it starts with the serve, if they won’t trust their service game then what else can they do? You’re on your own out there.”
“You’re by yourself, you don’t have someone guarding you. That’s a big factor for a team and how it can impact the whole team’s performance.”
And it was a service error that practically doomed the Lady Spikers against UP.
Trailing 23-19, Lourdes Clemente came up to the baseline to start what would’ve been La Salle’s offense but her service attempt went so low that it went under the net putting UP at the 24-19 match point.
Clemente, overall, committed five service errors, Aduke Ogunsanya, Marionne Alba, and Jolina Dela Cruz had three apiece while Tin Tiamzon, Desiree Cheng, and May Luna each had one.
“That was the big factor in the third set, we still carried our mistakes from the previous sets,” said De Jesus. “We never recovered, and the we didn’t regain our confidence.”