Cocolife knocks off Cignal to advance to semis

The Cocolife Asset Managers moved on to the 2018 Chooks to Go-Philippine Superliga Gran Prix semifinals after outlasting the short-handed Cignal HD Spikers, 25-28, 25-21, 28-26, at the FilOil Flying V Centre.

Cocolife will take on the second-seeded Petron Blaze Spikers in the best-of-three semifinals.

“We made a lot of mistakes today. We needed to do several adjustments, so I’m happy that we defeated a very capable team,” said Cocolife’s Serbian import Sara Klisura.

“Hopefully, we can limit our errors the next match because we will be going up against a much tougher opponent in Petron,” she added.

Cignal, who played without Sonja Milanovic due to a high-ankle sprian, grittily tried to stick with the Asset Managers. Down 17-21 in the third set, the HD Spikers crawled all the way back to take a 22-21 lead and eventually force a deuce.

Cignal had three chances at set point, but were stopped each time by Klisura. Smelling blood, Klisura smashed a hit past two blockers to give Cocolife their first match point chance, 27-26. The HD Spikers went to import Jeane Horton to try to knot the set again, but the American ran into an unrelenting wall of Cocolife blockers.

Klisura finished with 16 points while fellow Serbianl Marta Drpa added 19 markers, five which came off block kills.

Team captain Rachel Daquis did most of her damage in the third set, managing 19 markers to lead the HD Spikers.