La Salle Lady Spikers.–UAAP PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines–La Salle is slowly regaining its top form after beating another slumping squad in University of the East, 25-21, 25-18, 25-10, in the UAAP Season 86 women’s volleyball tournament on Wednesday at Mall of Asia Arena.
Angel Canino led the Lady Spikers once again with her offensive prowess, firing 17 points on 16 attacks and 52 percent attack efficiency while also helping La Salle’s defense with a block, nine excellent digs and seven excellent receptions.
But despite surging to its fourth win in five games, La Salle still sees the need to improve if it wants to retain the title.
SCHEDULE: UAAP Season 86 volleyball first round
“Actually, we’re not that satisfied with the way we played. We didn’t like the way we got into our plays in the first two sets,” La Salle assistant coach Noel Orcullo said. “Mostly we’re giving free points to our opponents due to our errors.”
“Like what coach (Ramil De Jesus) said, we need to give them (UE) some respect. So we kind of not giving them some respect in the first two sets so we needed to huddle up heading into the third and coach told us to respect our opponents that’s why we got a good result in the end and we were able to minimize our errors,” he added.
The defending champions effectively contained UE’s main gun Casiey Dongallo, who also played as middle blocker at some point in the game, to the lowest output of her rookie year at 15 points as La Salle maximized its net defense with a 10-3 block advantage.
Thea Gagate and Shevana Laput barricaded La Salle’s side with six total blocks between them while also contributing nine points apiece.
La Salle’s offense worked seamlessly and produced 20 more attacks than the 25 of UE who also committed 21 errors, 11 of which came from the second set.
The Lady Spikers suffered their first defeat of the season two games ago at the hands of University of Santo Tomas. And to recover from that five-setter loss, La Salle assembled two consecutive straight sets win starting from its arch rival Ateneo last Saturday.
The Lady Warriors managed to somehow keep up in the first two frames before the Lady Spikers surged to a 13-4 lead in the deciding set.
“Like coach Ramil [de Jesus] said, we gotta play with respect. So, when we came into that third set, we really just played it all out. We gave our all and their team responded back but then we responded with more power,” Laput said.
Team captain Julia Coronel paced La Salle with 15 excellent sets as libero Lyka de Leon protected the floor with 11 excellent digs with the same number of excellent receptions.
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La Salle will look for the same outcome when it battles University of the Philippines on Sunday at the same Pasay City venue.