MANILA, Philippines — College of Saint Benilde checked its skid in time and charged back from two sets down to foil Lyceum of the Philippines University, 22-25, 23-25, 25-14, 25-13, 15-10 and gain a piece of the early lead in the NCAA season 93 women’s volleyball at the Filoil Flying V Center in San Juan yesterday.
The Lady Blazers, whose erratic start enabled the Lady Pirates to gain early control, rode on a 15-4 fightback in the third set to stay alive then imposed their will and strength in the last two to snare the win and join defending champion Arellano U and San Beda at the top at 2-0.
St. Benilde peppered the Lady Pirates with crisp hits to anchor its big rally with Klarisa Abriam, Rachel Austero and Diane Ventura leading the attack. The Lady Blazers also settled down and made just four errors after yielding 27 in the first two frames, including the set-clinchers for the Lady Pirates.
“They still have that tendency for a slow start. It seems like we need more time to warm up. We also had 15 errors in the first set. How would we win if we give away points to our opponent? In the third set, we had lesser errors and we sharpened our moves in the other departments so I know we had the set already, same with the fourth and fifth sets,” said CSB coach Arnold Laniog.
Abriam paced the Lady Blazers with 18 points with all but one coming off attacks. Austero added 16 markers, Marites Pablo made 12 hits, Ranya Musa chipped in 11 points while Ventura added eight markers.
Bien Juanillo came through with 14 points, Monica Sevilla collected 11 while Christine Miralles logged nine for the Lady Pirates who slid to 0-2 with Mapua and Emilio Aguinaldo College.
San Beda, meanwhile, leaned on back-to-back hits by Cesca Racraquin at endgame as it repulsed Perpetual Help, 26-24, 25-18, 29-27, to force a three-way tie for the lead.
Racraquin’s clutch hits bailed the Lady Red Spikers out of trouble after blowing a 22-19 lead in the third set and barely surviving a back-and-forth battle.
“I noticed that we lacked the energy in our first game against JRU so I told my teammates that we need to be aggressive both on offense and defense. Our level of play was different today. We played as a team,” said Racraquin.
Racraquin had 13 points to backstop Nieza Viray who made a game-high 20 markers on 18 attacks and two aces for SBC.
Lourdes Clemente wound up with 16 points while Cindy Imbo scored 11 for UPHSD which to joint fourth with San Sebastian, Letran and JRU at 1-1.