NAGA CITY – The rookie-laden UST Tigresses may have hurdled the bumpy elimination-round challenge of a gutsy Calabarzon (Region IV-A) squad but not the roadblock posed by the dreaded quotient system as the defending champions bowed out of title contention in the 2009 Prisaa women’s basketball tournament at the University of Nueva Caceres gym last April 24.
Despite waylaying the Region IV-A lasses, 69-62, for a 3-1 win-loss card, the Tigresses – who played minus most of their mainstays – still found themselves at the tail-end of a three-team log-jam after only amassing .968 quotient points against the 1.059 and .972 norms of bracket topnotcher Bacolod-Western Visayas (Region 6) and Calabarzon, respectively.
“We had nine rookies in this team. The game they showed was great but I believe it could have gone a little farther,” coach Clemence Pastor told the Varsitarian. “This experience tells us that there really is a lot more room for improvement.”
Back in the first half, the Tigresses dropped an 8-0 bomb anchored on Rizzie Gale’s lay-ups to pull away from the stubborn Calabarzon crew and finish the second quarter on top, 42-32.
The Tigresses punished their opponents further with a menacing half court press to end the third period comfortably ahead, 58-41.
But Calabarzon surprised the Tigresses in the fourth quarter with an 11-4 run which chopped the UST lead to ten, 62-52.
Calabarzon trailed the rest of the way but kept the scores close to boost their quotient and enter the semifinals.
Gale led the National Capital Region with 16 points.
In earlier games, UST pulverized a six-man Southern Mindanao (Region 9) team, 129-31, last April 23 to rebound from a 51-67 loss against Region-6, 51-67, last April 22. The Tigresses debuted with a 96-26 thrashing of Cagayan Valley (Region-7) last April 21.
