There was no sense of grief nor sadness among the Soaring Falcons after Adamson suffered their first loss of the season on Sunday evening – just a surprising sense of pride.
“Yeah, I think that showed something in our team. Like the last few games against UP, NU, we were down but we never gave up,” reflected third-year guard Jerrick Ahanmisi about their last two games prior to their tilt against the FEU Tamaraws.
“That’s what we showed in this game also that even though this team is down, we’re never gonna give up on our game.”
“I think this is the best game of FEU that I’ve seen,” added third-year Adamson head coach Franz Pumaren.
During the game, the Soaring Falcons were down by as much as 17 points in the third quarter of the game. But instead of lying down, the league-leaders decided to turn it up by going on a 21-4 run to gain the lead late. The game went into extra time, and the Tamaraws managed to eke out an 88-85 win.
“They played well, but of course, partly we allowed them to play that way,” opined Pumaren. “We’re so relaxed during the course of the game but when we started playing the Adamson way of playing defense, were able to trim down their lead.
“I think we have to play a little bit smarter down the stretch. We’re just one rebound away from winning that game.”
“He just said that we got to work on our mental.. It’s the little mental mistakes that cost us the game. We just gotta keep working on,” added Ahanmisi, who had 21 points in the game.
Still, Pumaren could not help but be proud of the stand the Soaring Falcons made in the second half. Unlike his teams during the last two years, the multi-titled tactician knows that his squad is one of the top-tier teams this time around. The challenge now is how to play like that team for at least three-fourths of the game.
“In hindsight, if you’ll look at the other side of the coin, it’s just a game. But if you look at that, the old Adamson, if we’re down fourteen or fifteen, we’ll be losing by twenty to twenty-five points. But this time around, it showed sense of character with my team right now that we can make a comeback,” he beamed.
“We just have to make sure that we play forty to forty-five minutes of good basketball.”
