COACH Cholo Villanueva rued La Salle's errors in a blowout loss to National University in the opener of the UAAP women's basketball title series.
The Lady Archers looked much different than the team that dealt the Lady Bulldogs their only loss this season, with the defending champions winning by 32 in Game One of the best-of-three series.
See National U a win away from seventh straight title with rout of La Salle
"You need to play a perfect game against a perfect team like NU," lamented
Unfortunately, his Lady Archers looked anything but in the 32-point loss, one Villanueva charged to inexperience.
"I think our inexperience in the finals showed. We were very careless with the ball," he said of Salle 21 turnovers which turned to 32 easy points for NU.
"For us, those careless mistakes of losing possessions on the press shifted the momentum of the game and they were dictating it all the way. We just need to think that were just playing 40 minutes and of course, we're in the finals. We have to take care of every possession because it's a possession-by-possession game and we can't be giving up added possession to them because of our turnovers."
Villanueva also said that the Lady Archers can't back down from the bigger Lady Bulldogs after his side lost the rebounding battle, 39 to 49.
NU grabbed 16 offensive boards and turned it to 24 second chance points, which Villanueva hopes to avoid for the Taft side to stay in the series.
"We have to be on point with every possession, we need to be perfect on everything just to get a chance to win a game, and just to get a chance to win the game pa lang yun," he said.
All hope isn't lost for La Salle though, with Game Two set this Sunday at Mall of Asia Arena.
"For us, we're gonna make the right adjustments, we're gonna change our mindsets that it's just first to two wins. We just lost one game, we have two more chances to win the championship," said Villanueva.
"We just need to be more precise on our movements, perfect on our movements in each possession because they always capitalize on our mistakes. For us, the inexperience is there but we have to mature quickly in the next three days. We have to mature quicker, grow quicker, and learn from our mistakes in this game, and hopefully win the possession game in Game Two and win that game."
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