La Salle extends its winning run to 10 in women’s volleyball following a 25-22, 25-18, 25-18 win over UE today. Michele Gumabao led all scorers with 11 points followed by Cha Cruz with 9.
The Lady Spikers played just hard enough to win against UE today. They were not particularly sharp, and even allowed UE to take the lead, but bore down towards the end of each of the 3 sets to take the win comfortably. The team takes an 8-day break before taking on a UST team, which stretched the Lady Spikers to 5 sets before the Lady Spikers again pulled through late in the game.
Let’s hope that the Lady Spikers maintain their edge and focus over this long break. UST is starting to peak and will be dangerous; they handed Ateneo their 2nd loss last week. Coach Ramil has stated that he wants the Lady Spikers to prepare against the teams that gave them a hard time in the first round. In their 2nd round match, the Lady Spikers easily handled ADU which had taken a set in the first round. FEU, which stretched the Lady Spikers to a nerve-wracking 5 sets in their first matchup, also failed to get a set in their game last Wednesday. Of course, FEU was without Morada, who was instrumental in helping FEU compete on even terms in the 3rd and 4th sets. Those 2 comfortable wins over playoff contenders ADU and FEU are good indicators of the ability of the Lady Spikers to learn from their earlier matches.
Our team is starting to peak, there is a noticeable improvement in performance of individual players as well as in the teamwork on the floor. Our players feature prominently in almost all important statistics, although no one is dominating the numbers because the load is being shared across the team. That in itself is an indication of the multi-faceted capabilities of the team on both offense and defense. But it’s probably in the mental toughness that our team has shown significant improvement, in their ability to withstand the best that the opponents have been able to dish out, take control of the match, and out-steady the opponents with the game on the line. The girls don’t buckle under pressure, that should be bad news for the other title pretenders.