The clock ticking down, with the ball in his hands, Alaska Jr-NBA Youth Ambassador looks at clock as it winds down. He goes to his dominant side brushes away a defender and goes up for a floater and banks it in giving Xavier a 2-point lead with 13 seconds left in the game and leads Xavier to a 59-57 victory against the tough La Salle Greenhills squad.
The game started of slowly for the Stallions as it couldn’t buy a basket from the field and the charity stripe. Both teams threw the ball away countless of times, which made the coaches of both sides furious. Changgi Hong tried to carry the load of the Stallions scoring 7 of his 9 points in the 1st canto. La Salle capitalized on the Stallions gambling man-to-man pressure, which led to numerous easy under goal stabs. At the end of the 1st quarter buzzer, the score was 11-18 in favor the men in green.
The 2nd quarter troops of Head Coach Owen Oliva again started poorly from the field but it managed to dictate the tempo of the game forcing numerous turnovers from the Green Archers. As the quarter passed, La Salle managed to find a way to break Xavier’s daunting man-to-man defense and a variety of their zone presses to go up 23-16 until Alaska – Jr. NBA Ambassador Jarrell Lim single-handedly took over the game scoring relentlessly to keep the Stallions at bay. At the end of the quarter it was just down to a 2 point lead for the Green Archers, 29-27.
During the 3rd quarter, Xavier capitalized on its height advantage and scored on numerous second chance attempts to even the score at 36 all on Anton Lapez’s 3-point play conversion. As all things looked bright for the Stallions, RP Youth U-16 mainstay Isaac Go was called for 3 fouls in the first 5 minutes alone giving La Salle numerous chances to take the ball out and set their offense. As the Stallions still continued to clank baskets, their aggressiveness merited them numerous free throws but they didn’t take advantage of it.
During payoff period, the Stallions went on a relentless attack anchored by their defense. As they took their first lead of the game at 46-45, both sides exchanged baskets until Jarrell Lim hit the game-winner with 13 ticks remaining. La Salle tried to win the game but their 3-point attempt clanked off the back iron and the Stallions will advance to next week’s Finals for the third time in the last four years.
Lim ended up with a game-high 19 points on 6/9 shooting from the field (1/1 3PTs) and 6/9 from the charity stripe. Following him was Changgi Hong with 9, Isaac Go with 8 points plus a game-high 6 rebounds and 2 blocks. Anton Lapez and Tonito Puyat had 6 points apiece.
The Stallions will get a chance to defend their Passerelle crown next week against the winner of the Claret and San Beda game in the Poveda Gym.
The Scores:
Xavier 59: Lim 19, Hong 9, Go 8, Lapez 6, Puyat 6, Sy 3, Yu 3, Tio 2, Ejercito 2, Ong 1, Gemzontan 0, A. Tan 0, J. Tan 0, Chuacuco 0, Yeung 0.
Quarter Scores: 11-17, 27-29, 43-45, 59-57.
No comments:
Post a Comment