The University of the East Red Warriors looked unstoppable in the first quarter of its tilt against the UST Growling Tigers Saturday afternoon. The season hosts could not even cross the other end of the court, forcing the Growling Tigers to 21 first half turnovers.
However, the troika of Renzo Subido, Marvin Lee, and Jon Sheriff were able to turn things around. The three guards combined to score 50 of the 88 points of UST with Subido dropping a career-high 26 points.
“The guards killed us, sila Subido, si Lee and even si Sheriff,” UE head coach Derrick Pumaren reflected as his team was not able to convert on the 31 turnovers they were able to force.
“In more than 30 years of coaching, I saw it coming. I saw it last night those guys will kill us, true enough.”
The Red Warriors were up by as much as 15 points in that contest but the Red Warriors let their guard down according to the veteran mentor.
“It shouldn’t have been like that. We should have took care of business,” he furthered. “When we’re up, we simply ran away from what we were doing, they thought the game was over and I kept reminding them that it’s far from over.”
With UST turning the tides of the game, the cagers from Recto were clearly rattled, delving away from the ball movement they displayed in the first as they went one-on-one with the Growling Tigers.
“We just showed flashes of our brilliance tonight. We were there, but we were not going for the kill,” Pumaren remarked as the Red Warriors were just 4-of-18 from the field in the final frame – 17 of those attempts were contested. “I would say, they’re still thinking of themselves instead of playing for UE.”
“Basketball is a game momentum, at the end we didn’t play smart, we took bad shots, I don’t know why we need to take a three point shot when we were down by just two or one point, that’s not playing smart at all,” he closed.
The UE Red Warriors (0-2) will have a week to get its bearings back before facing the FEU Tamaraws on Sunday, September 18 at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum.
