ALFRED Aroga of National University was in no mood to answer questions about his match-up against La Salle's Ben Mbala on Sunday.
As far as he's concerned, there's no match-up in the first place.
“You (like to) talk about match-ups,” Aroga told reporters who asked about his duel with the La Salle big man in the wake of the Bulldogs' 66-75 loss to the Green Archers in the UAAP at the Smart AranetA cOLISEUM.
“I don’t really care about it. Everytime I go into the game, my mindset is NU versus this team. I’m not an individual athlete. I’m a team player. I’m focused on what I do to help my team win.”
[See Green Archers stay perfect]
Mbala, sustaining his fine play in his first season with La Salle, got the better of Aroga in this game, scoring 16 points and grabbing 15 rebounds against the NU big man who was held to two points on 1-of-5 shooting in 21 minutes on the floor.
Too bad there wasn't a match-up.
“There is no match-up in this game," Aroga, who won a championship with NU in Season 77, bristled. "People always talk about match-ups. It’s La Salle versus NU. I don’t like to talk about match-up."
Instead, Aroga blamed turnovers - NU had 29 in this game - for the loss.
“I can’t say off day. We got a lot of turnovers. We got out of the system in the crucial part of the game,” said Aroga. “The only opponent of NU is NU. We were right there but because of a lot of turnovers, we lost the game.”
Aroga, however, insisted La Salle is beatable.
“They are a pretty good team but they are beatable,” he said. “We just move on and get ready for the next game.”
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