Eagles prey on Tigers; UE wins

MANILA, Philippines - Rampaging Ateneo blew away regular customer University of Santo Tomas, 82-57, to rack up its ninth straight win in UAAP Season 74 men’s basketball tourney yesterday at the Araneta Coliseum.

Making their team offense feed off their defense this time, the Blue Eagles took the game out of the Tigers’ reach immediately after the opening buzzer, storming to a 15-6 lead en route to a 40-22 bubble by halftime.

There was no turning back from there as Ateneo zoomed to a whopping 70-39 tear to complete its mastery of UST for the 11th consecutive game dating back to 2007. UST dropped to 4-5 in a tie with DLSU at fourth spot.

“The focus today was to try and get a better flow of offense to start the game,” said AdMU coach Norman Black, who challenged his wards to play better team ball as opposed to one-on-one plays in the first half.

“We called a lot of team plays to make sure everybody got their touches and whoever has the best shot will take the best shot. I thought we did a much better job offensively in the first half, which really fuelled off our defense,” he added.

Ateneo shot 57.1 percent from the two-point area and 44.8 percent FGs in the first 20 minutes while dishing off a better-than-usual halftime output of nine assists. Overall, Ateneo had a 41.3 percent marksmanship on the floor and 16 feeds as against the Tigers’ 26 percent FGs and eight assists.

Nico Salva fired 20 points for AdMU, backstopped by Justin Chua’s 18 and Kiefer Ravena’s 14.

“He (Salva) just really surrendered to the flow of the offensive game. It really benefitted him a lot in so far as getting good looks,” Black said.

University of the East erased the bitter memory of an embarrassing 40-point setback to National U in their last outing by upstaging La Salle, 74-69, to improve to 2-7.

Skipper Paul Zamar pumped in 19 points while JM Noble shot a career-high 16 markers, eight of them in the payoff period, and Lucas Tagarda had a career-best 11.