ATENEO de Manila University powered its way to a 19-11 decision over Adamson University to create a logjam at second in the UAAP Season 86 Basketball Tournament on Sunday at the UP Diliman Baseball Field.
The Blue Eagles scored their second consecutive win and are now tied with the NU Bulldogs and the DLSU Green Batters at second with identical 4-3 records.
League-leading UST Golden Sox (4-2) and the UP Fighting Maroons (2-4) are still slugging it out as of press time.
The 30 total runs punched in by both teams are a season-high, beating the 29 runs accumulated by UST and Ateneo last March 8, and 11 of them came in the seventh and eighth innings for the Blue Eagles.
Down 8-11 heading to the seventh inning, the Loyola-based side found itself with runners on all the bases after two walks given to Joshua De Juras and Luis Capati and an error on the hit to the centerfield forced by Geof Magsadia.
From there, a series of more unfortunate events from the Soaring Falcons turned into an eight-run binge for the Blue Eagles laced with a triple from Enzo Montemayor that scored Joaquin Casanova for the third of these runs.
Ateneo head coach Bocc Bernardo, despite the early hole they fell in, was pleased with the victory as it came at the expense of the same Soaring Falcons team that beat them 9-8 to close out the opening round.
“The first takeaway here is that we were behind 9-0, but we always came back. Sabi ko nga sa mga boys, it’s a test of their character: are we going to go down without a fight, or are we going to climb ourselves back?” said the former Ateneo catcher.
That huge third inning was in contrast a product of superb hitting from the Blue Eagles with all of the seven at-bats that led to seven runs coming from hits, with Montemayor having his second of the game in that frame for a total of a pace-setting four hits on six at-bats.
“In that inning itself, we came back with our own seven runs, even if we had two outs. So, it just demonstrates a lot of character from our boys. We’re not a team to sleep on. Magandang comeback ito sa amin,” he added.
Adamson led the game early at 9-0 after its offensive side of the second inning but their seven errors scattered throughout the match doused their efforts, and six bases on balls was more than what Ateneo needed to start its rally.
The Lines:
ADU 0 2 7 1 1 0 0 0 0 – 11 8 7
Ateneo 0 0 7 0 1 0 8 3 X – 19 17 6
