Slow starts and all, Maroons still leave foes gasping

Quentin Millora-Brown says the Maroons are trying their best to start games a little better.—UAAP MEDIA .

It looks like University of the Philippines (UP) is learning to live with one of the problems it has been dealing with lately in the UAAP Season 87 men’s basketball tournament.

The Maroons went on yet another slow start on Wednesday night and somehow scrambled their game back together enough to blow away Ateneo, 75-47, for their ninth win in 10 games.

“I think for us, we know what we need to do to win and finding ways to execute—whether the ball is going through the hoop for us or not at the beginning,” Quentin Millora-Brown said after an all-around effort of 11 points and 10 rebounds.

“We know we’ll find a flow at some point throughout the game. If we can get it early, that’s great, but really just [focusing on the small] details.”

Over its last five games prior to manhandling the Blue Eagles, the Maroons had fallen into the habit of falling behind early and needing to regroup on the way to victory—they’ve been successful so far—and came into the Ateneo encounter looking to change that trend.

“The team knew that we had a couple of slow starts and we wanted to make sure that when we came out today, we weren’t slow, we weren’t flat,” Millora-Brown said.

“We wanted to make sure we set the tone early and just trying our best to execute every chance we had.”

That didn’t quite happen. Ateneo stormed off the gates with a 10-4 run to catch UP stalling again. But the Maroons turned things around pretty quickly to complete a season sweep of the Eagles.

How that reversal happened is amazing in itself: Offensively, UP outscored Ateneo, 71-37 the rest of the way, leading by as many as 30 along the way. Defensively, UP’s pressure forced the normally efficient Ateneo offense into its most turnovers this season at 17.

“That’s who we are ever since (a defense-minded team),” coach Goldwin Monteverde said after dealing his counterpart Tab Baldwin his worst loss in the league with the 28-point domination. “[We] try to apply pressure when playing, and I guess shifting that tempo toward us would be a factor also [to win]. So, just trying to get into our strengths.”

Prior to the battle of Katipunan, UP also routed Adamson, 70-59, after forcing them to 28 turnovers—the highest recorded this season in the men’s division.

Their current lapse hasn’t distracted the Maroons from looking at the end goal. But since the one team that was able to capitalize on that flaw happens to be defending champion La Salle, UP’s biggest hurdle to the crown, the Maroons have their work cut out for them.

“Since Day 1, our hunger has been there. We wouldn’t call it complacency, but maybe as humans, there are times that even if we are trying to be ready for a game … things do not fall where we want [them] to,” Monteverde said.