Just as advertised, this game was certainly like a dream.

For this one night, La Sallians were taken back in time when the Green Archers were the kings of college basketball.

Don Allado scored 23 points and pulled down 7 rebounds as he led the PBA Green Archer Alumni team dismantle their Atenean counterparts 117-104 today in a charity exhibition match.

La Salle played with a lot of intensity right from the start as they stormed to a 34-20 lead at the end of the first quarter. The team remained hot offensively throughout the match while their opponents continued to look disoriented and out of sync.

Mac Mac Cardona and JV Casio added 20 and 13 points respectively for La Salle. Ateneo was led by LA Tenorio with 20 points followed by Enrico Villanueva with 19.

Allado, the oldest player in this game, was adjudged MVP. He was a member of the 1998-1999 UAAP championship teams and was  MVP in both those years. Since then, no Green Archer has been able to win the league’s highest individual award.

More game photos at our Facebook Page

Notes: TY Tang and Willie Wilson were suited up but did not play due to injury. During the second quarter, Allado did a “Tebow Pose” after a three-point play opportunity. All of the members of the All Decade Team were there, including assistant coach Cholo Villanueva.

Box scores:

DLSU 117 – Allado 23, Cardona 20, Casio 13, Sharma 12, Arana 9, Maierhofer 9, Yeo 9, Ritualo 8, Cortez 8, Aquino 3, Gaco 3.

ADMU 104 – Tenorio 20, Villanueva 19, Aguilar 16, Fonacier 14, Intal 13, Kramer 7, Salamat 4, Baclao 4, Membrere 3, Alvarez 2, Bugia 2.

Quarters: 34-20, 61-48, 94-75, 117-104

In a game between two teams at the opposite ends of the standings, the outcome was a foregone conclusion right from the start.

The De La Salle Lady Spikers crushed the winless UP Lady Maroons yesterday 25-10, 25-8, 25-18 to move within two games of sweeping the elimination round.

The game was that one-sided that coach Ramil had the luxury of giving his bench plenty of court time. All the players he fielded in were able to score. Rookie Ara Galang led the team with 10 points.

The 12-0 Lady Spikers will next face NU this coming Wednesday.

In Men’s Tennis, La Salle remains on track of sweeping the elimination round as they defeated UP yesterday 4-1. La Salle also remains undefeated in the Women’s division. The Lady Tennisters hope to extend their own winning run Sunday against UST.

For the third time, the PBA will stage another exhibition match between active pros from La Salle and Ateneo. The “Green-Blooded vs True Blue” Dream Game will be this coming Sunday, February 5 at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum.

In 2005, Ateneo defeated La Salle 88-85 in a hotly-contested match. In 2008, the game ended in a deadlock, 90-all as no overtime was played.

Here is a quick breakdown of the two teams.

Backcourt Match-up
More than half of the players in the DLSU roster are guards. Expect the team to play an open-court, up-tempo style with a lot of scoring on the break and from the perimeter. With speed and athleticism on their side, DLSU will most likely turn this into a running game. ADMU has only one true point-guard in their line-up. Advantage: DLSU

Frontline Match-up
Allado is the only real post-up threat, Carlo Sharma is the only legit center and Rico Maierhofer is not expected to play heavy minutes since he just recovered from a serious knee injury. Wilson, Gaco and Ilad will be there for their defense and hustle points. Expect Ateneo to take it strong inside. Advantage: ADMU

Experience Match-up
Most of the DLSU players are very much part of their PBA team’s regular rotation. Casio may be technically a rookie but you may consider him a veteran already if you count his two-year duty with the national team. On the other side, Fonacier and Tenorio have proven to be big-time clutch players in the pros. Advantage: DLSU

This is not your typical exhibition match. This is all about school pride once again, a battle for bragging rights.

Fans may also take part in the action and get a chance to win a MacBook Air. Click Here for details

Now that’s what you call improving.

The Lady Spikers shut out UST in straight sets, 25-20, 25-22 25-13 as they continue on their mission to retain the womens volleyball championship. In today’s game, they effectively shut down UST’s offense with great net blocking and outstanding floor coverage. The Lady Spikers took the best UST could dish out in the first 2 sets, before completely dominating last year’s runner up team in the 3rd set. So effective was the blocking that UST could not get any consistent scoring from its main guns Banaticla, Ortiz, and Caballejo, who were all closely marked and consistently blocked whenever they would try to power their spikes into the DLSU side. UST resorted to a high risk tactic – powering their serves in an attempt to get quick points, but the move also gifted our team with some free points when the serves misfired.

The Lady Spikers allowed UST to take early leads in the first and second sets, then pulled ahead by the second technical timeout in both sets to win with a bit to spare. At no time was UST able to threaten to take any set, as our team clamped down on defense, muzzling any attempt by UST to gain momentum. In the 3rd set, the Lady Spikers then turned on the gas at the start, taking an early lead to get to 8, then building a double digit lead which was never threatened. The demoralized UST team just collapsed after that, scoring just 13 points.

Our offense was on track, with Esperanza effectively varying her sets to keep the attacks coming from different players, and UST could not keep tabs on all of them. Cha Cruz was steady, scored when needed, and had some great digs. Marano and Gumabao were very effective in their blocks, and contributed on offense as well. Galang (player of the game) and Reyes were also instrumental with their 2-way games. One area which could do with a bit more work is the serve. In the first and second sets, the team gave away at least 10 points on errant serves, perhaps due to jitters, but they steadied themselves from the middle of the second set onward.

The team appears to have taken Coach Ramil’s challenge at the end of the first round to heart – prepare for teams that gave them a hard time in the first round. So far, so good. No team has taken a set in the second round; the 2 teams that really threatened in 5 sets, FEU and UST, succumbed meekly in straight sets. Adamson failed to repeat its 1st round feat of taking a set.

At 11 wins, there are only UP, NU, and ADMU. Of the 3, only ADMU was successful in taking a set. Let’s see how they fare on Feb 12.

La Salle continues its buildup for the next UAAP men’s basketball season as they welcome PBA coach Tim Cone into its fold as team consultant.

The multi-titled Cone led the Alaska Milk franchise to 13 PBA titles including a rare grand slam in 1996. He is the current head coach of the B-Meg Llamados.

He will take over the position which was briefly filled by Jong Uichico, who recently joined the coaching staff of the national team.

As team consultant of the Green Archers, Cone will not be sitting on the bench during the games but rather assist incoming head coach Gee Abanilla in planning the direction of the university’s basketball program.

Cone may not be an alumnus but has a deep connection with La Sallians starting with his wife Cristina and brother-in-law (Eddie Viaplana, member of the 89-90 championship teams), his former assistant coaches with Alaska Dickie Bachmann and Luigi Trillo. There’s also Joaqui Trillo who was Alaska’s team manager during his 20-plus years as coach of the team. As B-Meg coach, he is now part of the San Miguel Group under chairman Danding Cojuangco, patron of the Green Archers.

So will we see the Archers adopt the triangle offense or perhaps have a modified version called the Arrowhead.

La Salle extends its winning run to 10 in women’s volleyball following a 25-22, 25-18, 25-18 win over UE today. Michele Gumabao led all scorers with 11 points followed by Cha Cruz with 9.

The Lady Spikers played just hard enough to win against UE today. They were not particularly sharp, and even allowed UE to take the lead, but bore down towards the end of each of the 3 sets to take the win comfortably. The team takes an 8-day break before taking on a UST team, which stretched the Lady Spikers to 5 sets before the Lady Spikers again pulled through late in the game.

Let’s hope that the Lady Spikers maintain their edge and focus over this long break. UST is starting to peak and will be dangerous; they handed Ateneo their 2nd loss last week. Coach Ramil has stated that he wants the Lady Spikers to prepare against the teams that gave them a hard time in the first round. In their 2nd round match, the Lady Spikers easily handled ADU which had taken a set in the first round. FEU, which stretched the Lady Spikers to a nerve-wracking 5 sets in their first matchup, also failed to get a set in their game last Wednesday. Of course, FEU was without Morada, who was instrumental in helping FEU compete on even terms in the 3rd and 4th sets. Those 2 comfortable wins over playoff contenders ADU and FEU are good indicators of the ability of the Lady Spikers to learn from their earlier matches.

Our team is starting to peak, there is a noticeable improvement in performance of individual players as well as in the teamwork on the floor. Our players feature prominently in almost all important statistics, although no one is dominating the numbers because the load is being shared across the team. That in itself is an indication of the multi-faceted capabilities of the team on both offense and defense. But it’s probably in the mental toughness that our team has shown significant improvement, in their ability to withstand the best that the opponents have been able to dish out, take control of the match, and out-steady the opponents with the game on the line. The girls don’t buckle under pressure,  that should be bad news for the other title pretenders.

The Lady Spikers formalize their entry in the UAAP Volleyball Final Four as they romped to an effortless win over FEU today 25-10, 25-18, 25-20.

The result was a far cry from their first round encounter where it went five sets.

Rookie Ara Galang led the Lady Spikers with 14 points followed by Cha Cruz with 13.

La Salle remains undefeated in the tournament at 9-0. They go for win number 10 this Saturday against UE.

The Lady Spikers had it quite easy this time.

Led by Captain Cha Cruz’s 18 points, La Salle defeated Adamson 25-20, 25-18, 25-22 yesterday to start the second round of the UAAP women’s volleyball tournament.

The team cruised through the first two sets but they had to climb from a 6-point deficit towards the end of the third set to close out the game. Though they committed 23 errors in this match, this is already a big improvement from the 44 they had against UST last week.

Next opponent will be FEU this coming Wednesday. La Salle escaped with a 5-set thriller against this team in the first round. The Lady Tams are currently at third after defeating NU in the other match yesterday.

Xavier School standout Jeron Teng will be going to De La Salle University next school year.

News of Teng’s decision to go Green broke out late last night and has already been confirmed today by those connected with the team.

Teng, son of one-time PBA star Alvin Teng and younger brother of UST Tiger Jeric Teng holds the distinction of scoring 104 points in one game last year. He also played in international tournaments such as the FIBA under-18 the Youth Olympic Games.

Before he graduates from high school, he will again lead Xavier as they gun for a 5-peat in the Metro Manila Tiong Lian basketball tournament which starts this week.

Jeron will be a big addition to the Green Archers as they aim to reclaim their reign in collegiate basketball.

The Lady Spikers are not ready to lose just yet.

Behind team captain Cha Cruz, De La Salle overcame a determined challenge by the UST Tigresses to escape with a come-from-behind 5-set victory today 20-25, 25-22, 16-25, 25-19, 17-15.

With the win, the Lady Spikers finish the first round of eliminations undefeated at 7-0. They also extend their mastery over the Tigresses since losing to them in the finals two years ago.

Cruz finished the game with 17 points, 16 attacks and 1 service ace while Abigail Marano added 18 points and 5 blocks. Both players were instrumental in the team’s comeback trail in the deciding set wherein they erased a 6-point deficit to clinch the win.

In a rematch of last year’s finals, both squads fought tooth and nail throughout the match. The Tigresses appeared to have things in control after taking a 2-1 set and with the momentum clearly in their favor. But the Lady Spikers simply refused to give up as they mounted a furious finish in the 4th set.

However, with fatigue setting in, they started flat in the final set as UST erected an early 7-1 lead. Luckily, the team showed tremendous resolve down the stretch to tie the count at 13-all.

With the score still tied at 15, UST committed a costly error paving the way for La Salle to seal the game.

The game would probably not have been this close if not for the 44 errors committed by the Lady Spikers.  This is one area that needs to be addressed come the second round.

The team showed a lot of heart today. They have been in this situation so many times. Even when they are pushed to the brink, they always seem to find a way to win.