In front of a passionate fanbase at home, UST coughs up mixed results
It was the kind of thing that popped out on the UAAP Season 87 schedule that not everyone expected.
“I don’t know when the last time in the UAAP you had to play a road game,” Ateneo coach Tab Baldwin said. “And of course I’m used to that throughout my career …But never here. And it was a mystery to us why that happened. But it did.”
The Blue Eagles hardly seemed perturbed though.
In front of perhaps the league’s loudest and most passionate fans and right in their home court, Baldwin’s wards gutted out a 67-64 victory over University of Santo Tomas at the Tigers’ spanking Quadricentennial Pavilion on Saturday.
“And what [the win] required of us was to really gut it out. And I think this was one of the gutsiest wins we’ve had in a few years,” Baldwin said.
For the Tigers, it was a sorry defeat and a missed chance to send one corner of España in Manila rocking with feverish cries of that iconic “Go USTe!” cheer. Even Forthsky Padrigao, a newcomer who flew the coop at Ateneo, realized the opportunity the Tigers allowed to slip away.
“You can’t say enough of the UST crowd,” Padrigao, who had eight points, five assists and three rebounds, said. “You could feel the effort they put into cheering for us. We really heard them. It’s just that we weren’t abe to repay that support with a win.”
It wasn’t a totally wasted day for the UST community, however.
As the Tigers suffered a third straight loss and dropped to 4-6 (win-loss) to lose ground in the chase for Final Four berths, the Tigresses came through with a testy victory of their own—their eighth in nine games.
A struggling Kent Pestrana found her rhythm in the fourth and led UST to a 77-73 triumph over Ateneo in a women’s tournament clash. The Eagles lost for the fifth time in nine games.
Feeling the love
“I’m happy a lot of [Thomasians] supported us in our home game,” said Pastrana, who finished with 16 points and eight rebounds.
The love the Tigresses received from the crowd helped Pastrana, the Season 86 Athlete of the Year, a reason to shrug off her struggles in the game: “I wasn’t happy with my performance because of my turnovers and my free throws,” she said.
UST women’s coach Haydee Ong relished the experience of playing before a sea of yellow.
“I wish we could play more in our home court,” Ong said. “But there will be a lot of complaints so we will be able to do this just this once. But it feels good to feel the support of the UST community while we play here.”
It was the kind of support, Ong added, that women’s basketball needs to beef up its status as an emerging fan-drawer.
“Even if we play in [Mall of Asia] or Araneta, I hope that the support for women’s basketball will continue,” she said.
With the games shifting to their regular arenas after Saturday’s playdate, Padrigao can only hope to make it up to the ever supportive UST community.
“In our next games, we just might be able to repay the support they give us,” the crafty guard said.
