Generika nips Amy’s for pivotal Superliga win

Games Saturday:

(FilOil Flying V Center)

2:30 p.m. – Cignal vs Standard Insurance-Navy

4:30 p.m. – F2 Logistics vs Petron

MALOLOS CITY – Generika brushed off a rusty start before going for the kill to pull off a 21-25, 25-17, 25-23, 25-14 conquest of Amy’s in the classification phase of the 2016 Philippine Superliga (PSL) All-Filipino Conference women’s volleyball tournament Thursday at the Malolos Sports and Convention Center here.

With Chloe Cortez carrying the fight, the Lifesavers caught fire in the crucial stretch of the third set before ripping the match wide open to complete the highly crucial win in this prestigious inter-club tourney bankrolled by KLab Cyscorpions, Mueller, Mikasa and Asics with TV5 as official broadcast partner.

With the win, the Lifesavers will face the winner between Cignal and Standard Insurance-Navy in the battle for 5th to 6th places on Sunday when the league rolls back to FilOil Flying V Center.

The HD Spikers and the Corvettes are set to lock horns on Saturday.

A rising star for University of Santo Tomas in the UAAP, Cortez stood tall with 16 attacks, four blocks and an ace to finish with a game-high 21 points for Generika, which has yet to lose a single match in the second round.

Middle blocker Gen Casugod was also impressive with nine points while seasoned playmaker Rubie de Leon tallied nine markers on top of 19 excellent sets.

“As usual, our problem was our service errors,” said Generika coach Francis Vicente, who missed three games in the second round after guiding the Philippines’ Under-19 national team to a pair of Asian tourneys in Bangkok.

“We had so many service errors that’s why we couldn’t execute in the first set. But it’s a good thing that the team recovered later on.”

True enough, nothing went right for the Lifesavers in the first set.

But in the second set, Generika bared its fangs as it raced to a 7-0 start before entering the first technical timeout with a comfortable 8-2 advantage. The Spikers never recovered from there as Cortez and Casugod asserted their might defensively while wing spikers Shaya Adorador and Wensh Tiu supplied the offense.

The Lifesavers, however, found themselves in trouble in the crucial stretch of the third set as the Spikers, led by Coleen Bravo, took a 23-20 advantage. But de Leon took the cudgels and came up with some brilliant playmaking to overhaul the deficit into a 24-23 advantage before Ynah Pagdanganan connected a service ace to wrap up the set.

“That’s the time where the maturity of my team was tested,” Vicente said. “I only have two veterans; the rest are all college students. So like Amy’s we’re also slightly immature. Fortunately, the veterans stepped up and carried us to victory.”

Skipper Cindy Imbo and middle blocker Lourdes Clemente provided the firepower, finishing with 11 and 10 points, respectively for the young Amy’s squad, which has yet to win a single game in this tournament.