Petron books title shot
Petron made a short work of Smart-Army, 25-12, 25-15, 25-17, to book a ticket to the Finals of the Chooks to Go-Philippine Superliga (PSL) Invitational Conference Saturday at Muntinlupa Sports Center.
It will be the fifth straight Finals appearance of the Blaze Spikers, who started their run in the the 2016 Grand Prix.
“It was an unpredictable matchup for us so we focused on our team, our strengths and good thing we executed [the game plan] well,” said Petron head coach Shaq Delos Santos, who hopes to steer the team to a second straight title of the season.
Petron will face the winner of the F2 Logistics and Cignal duel in a best-of-three championship series starting Thursday at Filoil Flying V Centre.
Sisi Rondina and Aiza Maizo-Pontillas led the assault with nine points apiece while Ces Molina and Mika Reyes chipped in eight and seven hits, respectively.
Dimdim Pacres finished with seven points as she tried to shoulder Smart-Army’s hopes. The team will face the losing semifinalist in the battle for the bronze.
Generika-Ayala shut down its campaign on a high note as it prevailed over Sta. Lucia, 25-10, 2426, 25-10, 25-18, to grab fifth place.
Patty Orendain delivered the major blows for the Life- savers, finishing with 23 points. Angeli Araneta tallied 14 hits for Generika-Ayala, which started the conference on fire with a 3-1 win-loss card before falling prey to the experienced Giga Hitters in the playoffs.
“Actually, our loss in the quarterfinals really hurt us. But I told my players that we cannot deal with that forever, we have to accept it and move,” said Generika-Ayala head coach Sherwin Meneses.
“So I told them that if we will not play well today we will fail to bounce back from that loss because our goal here is to keep on improving our record.”
The Lifesavers lost the second set committing two crucial errors that allowed the Lady Realtors to tie the match one-set apiece.
But they managed to get their act together and recovered in the third set with another 15point rout for a 2-1 set lead.