Filoil: La Salle beats Letran, faces Ateneo next

MANILA, Philippines — Almond Vosotros uncorked three straight triples in the fourth quarter to help De La Salle break loose en route to a 64-45 win over Letran Monday in the Filoil Flying V Hanes Premier Cup at the Arena in San Juan.

The Knights were hanging around before Vosotros’ barrage of treys stretched the Green Archers’ lead to 16, 55-39, with 4:42 left.

“I think we did a good job in the second half, the first half we were missing a lot of shots, open shots and free throws and it was just a lack of concentration on our part,” said DLSU head coach Gee Abanilla. “In the second half we managed to move the ball, extra passes, actually we got 18 assists for tonight’s game, we shared the basketball, we looked for the open guy and it’s a good thing Almond (Vosotros) and Norbert (Torres) made their shots.”

“Nung pumasok first shot ko nung fourth quarter doon ko nakuha yung confidence ko. Sabi ko kapag na-open ako titira ko,” said Vosotros, who topscored with 16 points on four-of-six shooting from downtown.

Forward Jeron Teng, who played the role of a playmaker for the most part of the fourth period, added 11 points, two rebounds and three assists while Norbert Torres had seven points, 12 rebounds and three assists but committed five errors.

Mark Cruz was the lone Knight in double-digit scoring with 10 points as Raymond Almazan was held to just two points on one-of-eight shooting with most of his attempts down low didn’t even hit the rim.

The Archers, who eliminated the Knights from quarterfinals contention and helped University of Santo Tomas nail the final playoffs slot, upped their mark to 6-1 and will dispute the top spot in Group B standings with fierce rival Ateneo on Saturday.

“I think Ateneo is a really good team right now especially they had their training abroad and they would come out with a lot of confidence in that training. So I think we have to be prepared and we must be able to play consistent good basketball all throughout if we want to win against Ateneo,” said Abanilla.

“It’s going to be a different ball game because it’s an Ateneo-La Salle ball game but we will treat it the same as we did in our previous games. We want to improve ourselves as a team and that’s basically it.”