Cortez, Archers left to lick their wounds after loss to Blue Eagles
The Ateneo and La Salle rivalry has built numerous stars over the years.
It was in those fabled rivalry games where Ateneo notables like LA Tenorio, Chris Tiu, Kiefer Ravena and La Sallians JVee Casio, Joseph Yeo and Mac Cardona truly showed their potential as future stars of Philippine basketball.
So when Jacob Cortez and company saw Ateneo in their calendars, they wanted to show just how motivated they were for the duel and what they could do in one of the most premier rivalries in the country’s basketball scene.
Unfortunately, that seemed to have cost them.
“Everyone was trying to get theirs, including me,” Cortez told the Inquirer after La Salle’s 81-74 loss to the Blue Eagles at Mall of Asia Arena on Sunday.
“We found out now that it’s not going to work, no matter what team that is. Ateneo showed that to us.”
The Archers were impossibly mired in a mess of their own making, hitting just 9 of 46 attempts beyond the floor after three quarters of play. But the message was clear for La Salle: it needed to move the ball more. The team had eight assists entering the fourth, meaning all but one of its made shots came from passes.
La Salle shot better in the fourth, where it outscored Ateneo, 36-13, forced eight turnovers on the Eagles and made the deficit seem respectable in the end.
“The way we played for the first three quarters is about as good as an Ateneo team can play,” Ateneo coach Tab Baldwin said after watching his team lead by as many as 31 before the fourth.
“Then in the fourth quarter, we played about as badly as an Ateneo team has played,” Baldwin added.
“Fortunately, it was only one quarter.”
Three players finished with 15 points each for Baldwin, including Shawn Tuaño, the team’s energy guy who came through on offense with clutch momentum-sapping baskets to help hold off La Salle’s charge.
“If I’m needed to be the energy guy, I’ll be the energy guy. If I need to score, I’ll try to score. If I need to play defense, I’ll play defense,” Tuaño said after the game. “I just try to do my roles to the best of my abilities.”
Bulldogs next
Ateneo thus kept its record clean after four games while La Salle dropped to 2-2, with the Archers left to rue about where the effort was in the first three periods.
“We can’t just play one quarter,” Cortez said after dropping his first Ateneo-La Salle game.
“We have to play the whole game. We weren’t ready for them. Obviously, they were ready for us. We’ll find a way to win in the next round [vs. Ateneo] and the next game,” he added.
Cortez finished with 10 points and four rebounds, but the second-generation Archer made just three of 13 attempts from the field and had only two assists.
He and his teammates hope to bounce back when they battle National University next.
