ALL hope is not lost for the green-and-white faithful even after National U’s masterful 25-17, 25-21, 13-25, 25-17 Game 1 win over La Salle in the UAAP Season 87 women’s volleyball finals.
READ: Belen outduels Canino as NU outguns La Salle in Game 1
As tall an order it might be for the Lady Spikers to turn this title series around, the 12-time league champions are no strangers to finals comebacks.
Based on two decades worth of recorded data, La Salle has lost Game 1 in six prior occasions in the Final Four era before Sunday’s defeat to NU.
Two of those title series ended with the Lady Spikers winning the next two games to complete a finals reverse sweep.
UAAP Season 74 (2012): Thrice-to-beat La Salle repels ‘phenomenal’ Ateneo scare
Its most recent show of championship resilience wasn’t as recent as one would think for a La Salle team now searching for its 13th title.
It was 13 years ago back in Season 74 when the Lady Spikers wrote the first chapter of their historic women’s volleyball rivalry with the Ateneo Lady Eagles.
The green-and-white completed a 14-game sweep of prelims play and was incentivized with a rare thrice-to-beat advantage following a team appeal to scrap the traditional Final Four format that year.
Having gone unbeaten in the elimination round, the second-seeded and Roger Gorayeb-led Lady Eagles dealt the then-defending champions Lady Spikers a Game 1 upset no one saw coming.
Ateneo’s ‘Fab Five’ took care of business in the title series opener through team captain Fille Cainglet’s 19-point performance in a 23-25, 28-26, 25-23, 25-17 come-from-behind victory.
Topping the scoresheets, however, was a debuting Alyssa Valdez who dished out 24 points on 19 attacks, four aces and one block.
With all the pressure mounted on it after the shock loss, La Salle proved that champions do what champions do — fighting to the finish.
It took a handful of decorated veterans and an up-and-coming talent for the Lady Spikers to complete the series comeback.
Season MVP Aby Maraño, eventual Finals MVP Cha Cruz, best blocker Michele Gumabao and Rookie of the Year Ara Galang fought back to win the school’s seventh UAAP women’s volleyball title by taking Game 2 in four sets before a straight-sets shutout in Game 3.
UAAP Season 71 (2009): Taft takes crown back from Morayta
Making this La Salle championship comeback much sweeter were the unprecedented circumstances that preceded it.
The Lady Spikers were once three-peat women’s volleyball champions from Seasons 66 to 68 before the school’s league-wide suspension in Season 69 and having their elimination round wins forfeited in Season 70 for fielding ineligible players.
Season 71 would then become the Lady Spikers’ proper redemption campaign.
And in that year, Ramil de Jesus’ wards returned like they were never gone.
La Salle restored order and took the league by storm with a 13-1 prelims record to take the top seed away from then-reigning champion Far Eastern University led by the late veteran mentor Nes Pamilar.
Both taking care of business in the Final Four, La Salle and FEU would contest the championship that year in a best-of-three series.
With their season series split, the Lady Tamaraws held up their end of the bargain by storming past the Lady Spikers in the series opener in a thrilling five-set finish, 16-25, 27-25, 25-21, 24-26, 15-10.
Backed by the graduating Rachel Daquis, it was Lady Tamaraws legend and that season’s best server in Maica Morada who showed the way for the defending champions with 21 points on 18 attacks, two aces and one block.
But there was just no stopping a La Salle team eager to make up for lost ground following a series of misfortunes that abruptly halted its trail of women’s volleyball supremacy.
One of the greatest-ever players to represent the green-and-white in Manilla Santos capped her historic UAAP career with the MVP nod and, most importantly, a championship after leading La Salle to back-to-back four-set wins in Games 2 and 3.
With a legend in Santos manning the offense and a heralded blocker in Jacq Alarca holding fort on defense, even the mighty FEU failed to stifle La Salle’s dynastic resurgence.
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