The Fighting Maroons won’t be taking their foot off the pedal after another impressive performance against University of the East on Tuesday afternoon.
Their 81-68 win over the Red Warriors has officially secured the twice-to-beat advantage for Goldwin Monteverde’s squad as the second seed in the playoffs. After improving to a 10-2 record, University of the Philippines has already surpassed its nine-win total back in UAAP Season 82.
Despite being in a good position, the Fighting Maroons will continuously seek improvements in their last two games of the eliminations. They go up against UST and Ateneo in a bid to finish the second round on a high note.
“Happy ako because you know, nakita naman natin ‘yung way namin towards this position,” UP head coach Goldwin Monteverde said. “Marami kaming close games na nakita ko naman na we dealt with every challenge na naharap namin during games. We deal with it as a team, and kumbaga nag-rise kami dun sa mga challenge.
“Ngayon, we need pa rin to try to improve for the next two remaining games namin. Ganun naman talaga tingin ko ‘di ba? Khit nasa Final Four na tayo, learning does not stop – dere-derecho tayo na mag-improve,” the multi-titled high mentor in the high school ranks continued.
One of their main guys, Zavier Lucero, has been tallying limited numbers in the second round. This, after he finished the first half of the season with 15.29 points and 8.29 rebounds through seven games played. He was also held in single digits in scoring for three consecutive bouts in the second round against FEU, Adamson, and La Salle.
In those three games, he averaged just 7.33 points on a combined 9-of-25 clip.
Against UE, the transferee from Cal State Maritime finally broke out of his personal slump. He produced 20 points on 6-of-11 shooting from the field. He also grabbed 14 rebounds, three assists, and three blocks in close to 27:12 minutes of action.
Despite being a marked man by many of their opponents, Lucero knows that a team effort is still necessary in order for the Fighting Maroons to continue to succeed, especially in the playoffs.
“As much as I wanna play well, it’s never gonna be just about me or how I play. We’ve been winning, for the most part, we dropped one game. Me not performing to the level that I did in the first round is just part of basketball,” the 6-foot-6 forward stressed. “Can’t look too much deeper into it than that. I’m just worried about how we can… Like I said and what coach keeps saying, just continue to build going into the playoffs.
“We’ve been talking a lot lately, especially coming out of that Adamson loss, to try to build and get momentum,” Lucero claimed. “We knew we were going to be in the playoffs but it’s just about these last few games going into the playoffs in the right condition to win games when we get there.
“I thought we built on that today and the trick is to keep it going and keep building.”
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