NO MORE PLAYING SAFE
With still a lot of Premier Volleyball League (PVL) action left to play, Creamline will remain a target for its opponents.
“We have been playing for a long time now so definitely we are one of the teams who have been heavily scouted in the league,” Alyssa Valdez told the Inquirer after its first loss this tournament, a shocking sweep by Chery Tiggo. “Maybe it’s true that we can already be read by our foes.
“That’s one of our learnings, as well as that we can’t play safe in this tournament: High risk and high reward.”
The Cool Smashers rode that risk when faced with the prospects of another shutout loss, and the reward was high: Creamline denied Cignal the opportunity to produce the same result handed to it by the Crossovers by salvaging a 26-28, 22-25, 25-22, 25-21, 16-14 action-packed clash late Tuesday night.
And the Cool Smashers definitely showed that they won’t allow anything to distract them from getting its eighth championship—not even by a historic performance of Tots Carlos, who took over the league’s highest-scoring record by a local player in a game with 38 points.
“Those 38 points, they were not personal points: Those were team points so no matter how much each of us score individually, we are very happy because it’s for the team,” Carlos said after carrying the offensive load for Creamline which claimed the solo top spot with a 6-1 standing ahead of the Holy Week lull.
“I am happy to have this opportunity but at the end of the day, I feel much better seeing the team win,” she added.
“Yup, 38 points [for Tots]. But I don’t count points,” coach Sherwin Meneses jested when asked about his ward’s achievement. “What’s more important is that we got the win.”
“High scoring or not, as long as we get the win because every victory is important with the standings of the other teams very close together. You really need to get every game,” he added.
Meneses, Carlos and her teammates know the value of each win they secure, with the current leaderboard congested at the top.
A game behind
Riding a three-game winning streak of its own that started from slaying the league giant, Chery Tiggo, like Petro Gazz, is just a game behind Creamline with a 5-2 record.
Meanwhile, last conference’s finalist Choco Mucho and PLDT are tied at 5-1 while the HD Spikers are still within striking range of a final four spot with four wins in six games.
Creamline still has four games left to play when the league resumes. The Cool Smashers will get to test its mettle against Brooke van Sickle-powered Petro Gazz before taking on Nxled.
Creamline will then look to sustain its dominance over the Flying Titans, who are eager to overcome the defending champion in a rematch of last conference’s title bout, before its final assignment of the preliminaries against the High Speed Hitters.
“We have to be thinking like we are new here in the league so that we have a new motivation,” Valdez said. “With all of that kind of thinking, we have to be confident as well that we weren’t here just because we’re part of it but we’re one of the teams that have been here for a long time and been doing really well in the PVL.
“We just need to have the balance of thinking like a rookie but also have that confidence to fight well every game.” INQ
