Benilde overturns Baste, 80-74
College of Saint Benilde recovered not only from a thrashing from San Beda, but from a 17-point hole against San Sebastian, as the Blazers oust last year’s third placer, 80-74, in NCAA seniors basketball action Wednesday at The Arena in San Juan City.
With the win, the Blazers are now at 8-5 and is outside looking in the Final Four.
Down 40-23 in the second quarter, the Blazers launched a 10-0 finisher for a reachable 33-40 deficit in the first half.
Mark Romero sparked the furious Benildean run with all of his five triples in the second quarter alone.
The pro-bound forward led his team with 25 points while fellow pro-bound Paolo Taha tallied 19 points and 11 rebounds.
Taha and Jonathan Grey then led the Blazers’ charge in the third quarter, with both guards locking down on C.J. Perez’s dribble drives. Grey also contributed 18 points and nine boards and was instrumental in pulling the Blazers away from a 66-all tie in the fourth quarter.
“My shots fell when we took control over the flow of the game,” said Romero in Tagalog. “We can’t afford to lose the following games especially since we’re just half-a-game behind JRU and Perpetual and we still have five games left for us to win.”
The 3-10 Stags, missing the Final Four bus for the first time since it won the championship in 2009, were led by Jovit de la Cruz with 21 points and six assists and Bradwyn Guinto with 13 points and 13 rebounds.
Racal scores 27 as Letran stays alive
In the second game, Colegio de San Juan de Letran relied on hot shooting from Kevin Racal to stay alive in the season with a 79-70 drubbing against the crippled Emilio Aguinaldo College (EAC).
Racal scored a season-high 27 points on top of six shots from downtown to outshoot the Generals, who are still missing the services of the injured Cedric Noube Happi.
The game though was tight all throughout as the Generals also fought fire for fire with four triples each from Jan Jamon and shooting center Jerald Serrano. Serrano top scored for his team with 17 points while Jamon tallied 14 points. Power forward Sydney Onwubere stepped up in Happi’s absence with 15 points and 12 rebounds.
Trailing by one possession, 68-71, EAC missed its chance to steal a game as shooter Joshua General missed an open trey while John Tayongtong subsequently missed a driving layup.
Racal then responded with two triples to finally pull away with the win.
The Knights (5-7) are now tied for sixth and seventh place with neighboring Lyceum and must win at least five of its remaining six games to stay in contention
Hopes are getting dimmer for EAC as they have dropped to 3-9 and must win all their remaining games and hope that the higher-ranked teams go in losing streaks.
