AROUND THE LEAGUE: Post-mortem on La Salle Part 1
By Sid Ventura, Guest Columnist
16 September 2009 11:20 AM
(Sid Ventura is an analyst in the Studio 23's Coverage Panel of the UAAP. He has been an online sportswriter since 2001. His Around The League is a weekly column in this site.)
Since Friday morning, I have received an average of, oh, I don’t know, 10-12 “what happened to La Salle? How did they lose to NU??” type of questions per day. And to tell you the truth, it’s getting tiresome having to answer this. In fact, just for kicks, I gave different answers to different people all throughout the weekend. Which, is, in a way, the correct answer, really, because there is no one singular reason why the Green Archers lost the most important game of their season.
You can take your pick on this one: horrible field goal shooting (30% for the game), equally horrible free throw shooting (17 misses – you can’t miss that many and expect to win), injuries to Yutien Andrada and Arvie Bringas that further decimated La Salle’s already thin frontline, Kish Co’s pass to no one in the dying seconds, Mervin Baloran missing two free throws with NU up by just one but unbelievably getting the rebound of his own miss (he was 15 feet away; where were the DLSU rebounders?), the botched last play that was painful to watch…the list can go on.
The short answer: it was just one of those games. The Archers appeared to have been looking past the doormat Bulldogs, thinking this was a sure win. They didn’t count on NU ruining their plans of a playoff against UST, given that the Bulldogs entered the game mired in a six-game losing streak.
There was no sense of urgency, no blazing look in their eyes that said, “We are going to win this game.” Instead, their collective body language said, “It’s just NU. We’ll pull away sooner or later.” They never did.
Ironically, La Salle got good games from two veterans who had been criticized the whole season long for playing like a pair of bumbling rookies. Peejay Barua had 17 points while Bader Malabes chipped in 9 to account for 43% of DLSU’s total output, as if to tell their critics, “Hey, don’t look at us this time. We did our job.” Then again, the third non-performing veteran, James Mangahas, finished the season in his usual non-performing way, scoring a paltry 2 points. (continue reading here)
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