6-foot-7 Rodrigue Ebondo, with his hands on his knees, was gassed on Thursday afternoon after leading the Centro Escolar University Scorpions to their breakthrough win in the PBA D-League. He had just played 37 minutes, doing it on both ends to help CEU secure a tight 72-70 win over Batangas.
“I haven’t played this much!” the 21-year-old admitted about his minutes.
For the first time since joining the D-League back in 2013, the Johnny Yap-owned franchise decided to field in a team that is purely school-based.
Without the likes of Michael Calisaan, Paul Desiderio, and Joseph Sedurifa, the Congolese big man served as the team’s anchor and leading scorer in the first three games, scoring 23.5 points and grabbing 17.0 rebounds in 36.0 minutes of action — a role he rarely played with the Café France Bakers under coach Egay Macaraya.
“There is an adjustment in the team because we don’t really have the same line-up as last conference. Now, we just have the CEU players,” he shared.
“There was a big adjustment in the coaching staff as the players.”
But after absorbing two straight setbacks, including an opening day stunner against the Wangs Basketball Couriers, the morale of the team was at rock bottom, according to the foreign student-athlete.
“We were like down because looking at our two first games, the two losses were like very painful for us.
“The first game we lost by one [87-88 vs Wangs], then in the second game [against Tanduay] we didn’t really play well,” he recalled.
Ebondo is hoping that the breakthrough win removes all his teammates’ doubts and lets them push forward in their upcoming games.
“Today’s game was a crucial game for us to get back our confidence for the next games. We just needed to win today to get our confidence back,” he stated.
“Yeah. I really hope that the win we got today makes us more stronger in the upcoming games.”
