Unbeaten squads University of Santo Tomas and Adamson U rolled their way into the next round, walloping separate counterparts in the 2023 Shakey’s Super League (SSL) Collegiate Pre-Season Championship Season 2 Monday at the Filoil EcoOil Centre in San Juan City.
The Golden Tigresses (3-0) beat reigning NCAA champion College of St. Benilde Blazers, 25-13, 22-25, 25-12, 25-22 to complete a Pool C sweep as the Lady Falcons (2-0) clobbered NCAA runner-up Lyceum Lady Pirates, 25-16, 25-16, 25-13, to secure the top spot in Pool B.
Adamson’s win also gave way to the qualification of Arellano (2-1) in Pool B as Lyceum (1-2) crashed out of contention.
Defending champion National U (2-0) from Pool A is the other team to have booked its seat in the playoffs, leaving only four spots up for grabs in the final week of the elimination round.
UST, which previously trounced Letran and the University of Perpetual Help System Dalta, once again relied on a scattered attack with three players barging into double digits led by Jonna Perdido, who hammered 20 points on 20 attacks.
Regina Jurado and Angeline Poyos produced 19 and 17 points, respectively, as UST carries over a perfect record to the playoffs of the SSL Season 2 backed by Mikasa, Eurotel, Victory Liner, Summit Bottle Water, Peri-Peri Charcoal Chicken, R and B Milk Tea, Potato Corner, Rebel Sports, Converge ICT Solutions and Genius Sports.
A 7-2 finishing bite highlighted by Jurado’s crosscourt hit in the fourth set secured the win for the Golden Tigresses, who showed sharper fangs in erasing an 18-20 deficit and dodging a deciding set.
In the first match, the Lady Falcons needed only 68 minutes to claw the Lady Pirates behind the troika of Lucille Almonte, Jimy Jean Jamili and Red Bascon with seven points each.
With nine players also netting scores, playoff-bound Adamson hardly broke a sweat in following up an easy debut win against Arellano ahead of its last game against winless San Beda for a sweep bid in the SSL in cooperation with the Commission on Higher Education and the Philippine Sports Commission.
“It’s really a good start for us at 2-0 and to develop a chemistry at the same time while playing this season,” JP Yude of Adamson said, who finished third both in the SSL Season 1 and National Invitationals last month.
CSB, led by Gayle Pascual’s 13 points, slid to 1-1 in Pool C with a crucial game left against Perpetual next Saturday as Lyceum (1-2) fell short in advancing to the next round along with San Beda (0-2) in Pool B.
All games will be accessible across all platforms live and on-demand through the social media pages of Plus Network and SSL with Solar Sports, Blast TV and Aliw Channel 23 as TV partners.
