To fix La Salle’s championship defense, it needs to fix its defense

MANILA, Philippines – The road to a repeat has opened with a rocky start.

After losing their second straight game on Sunday, July 20, to the Ateneo Blue Eagles, the De La Salle Green Archers now look to reload and aim to attain their first win of the UAAP season when they go up against the National University Bulldogs on Wednesday, July 23, at the Mall of Asia Arena.

However, doing so won’t be easy – not with the team’s starting point guard shelved for the rest of the season and the team’s defense looking paltry.

“At first we didn’t know, when we knew about, syempre, nakakbadtrip rin at sad kami para sakanya,” Kib Montalbo shared in an exclusive interview with Rappler on the injury of starting PG Thomas Torres.

(When we knew, of course, we were angst and we felt bad for him.)

Torres isn’t a high-profile scorer or the best distributor for DLSU, though he is the club’s main play-setter and a viable threat from the outside. Out with a fractured foot, Torres’ spot will now presumably be taken by Montablo, who has been given a higher sense of responsibility he did not expect to have entering his sophomore season.

“Kahit ano (no matter), I’ll be ready,” the Bacolod native mentioned when asked how he feels about the possible starting gig. “Yup. I’m ready.”

One of Montalbo’s assignments will be to make sure the ball keeps moving for a team which has a weakness of having the ball rotation turn stagnant from time to time. Furthermore, he’ll also have to do a good job of getting the ball to the team’s big men more, while maintaining balance in the offensive system.

“Just a balance between attacking with the bigs and the guards,” answered DLSU head coach Juno Sauler in Sunday’s post-game media session when asked what the team needs to improve on offense. “It’s just a balance between playing inside and playing outside,” he would later add.

One of the big guys Montalbo will have to feed is Arnold Van Opstal, who gave his teammate a vote of confidence as the club reels off two straight fourth quarter meltdowns.

“He’ll be back, he’s a strong guy,” Van Opstal first said about the injured Torres, before mentioning that: “Kib will take over. Kib has improved tremendously and we put our hands on Kib now to take over.”

Montalbo is already fully aware of what the team needs on offense, though both him and Van Opstal say it’s not that area the Green Archers need to key on.

“Actually our offense got better. We played quite well,” Montalbo said of the defeat to the Blue Eagles, which he called a different feeling from normal losses “because it’s Ateneo.” 

“We prioritize our defense now.”

“Our offense (against Ateneo) was good. We executed on offense,” added Van Opstal. “Kiefer (Ravena) was hot, and Von (Pessumal) was hot. We gave them the shots and they just made it.”

Losing to Ateneo is already a tough ordeal as it is, but the team’s lackluster defense in the fourth quarter made the thought harder to swallow. 

Ravena, Pessumal, and Alfonso Gotladera all recorded career-highs on Sunday with 29, 21, and 17 points, respectively. 

In the Green Archers’ loss to the Far Eastern University Tamaraws eight days before on Saturday, July 12, they allowed Mike Tolomia to torch them for 23 markers, while letting Mark Belo explode for 20.

La Salle, which was one of the top defenses in Season 76, clearly needs to find its groove back on the other side of the floor.

“Actually, defense talaga (it’s really defense). We have to play defense. Since the Ateneo game, coach has been stressing out defense talaga (it’s really defense),” Montalbo noted. 

“Too many easy points, and they were getting offensive rebounds,” Coach Sauler said of Ateneo’s impressive performance against La Salle on Sunday. “It’s just our defensive mental toughness, is what we need to improve on.”

“We just have to toughen up a bit more on the defensive end.”

DLSU will get a chance to show how much it’s improved in stopping the other team from scoring against the Bulldogs, who at 2-0 have debunked the notion that they no longer are contenders following the departure of Bobby Ray Parks and Emmanuel Mbe.

National University starting point guard Gelo Alonino is playing out of his mind, having established back-to-back career-high performances in his team’s first two games. Rookie big man Alfred Aroga has also looked impressive, and the team has a whole looks like a threat to any team in the UAAP.

“We’re just looking forward to the next game and we want to bounce back,” says Van Opstal. “We’re not going to think about the pressure. We just want to take it the same way we did last year: just play our game.”

Montalbo attests to his teammate’s philosophy: “Kami, pag matalo kami (when we lose), we just look at what we did that was wrong. The past is past. We have to play the present, so we’re going to start a new season (on Wednesday).”

Sauler, concurrently, is asking for more consistency out of his team, as they aim to withstand a slow start to their title defense.

“There were some instances wherein it seemed that we were lost (against Ateneo). So it’s really trying to find a way to play consistently for 40 minutes.”

Or in other words: “I don’t know if it’s going to be a new La Salle, but it’s going to be an improved La Salle team,” according to Montalbo, who says they can no longer take teams by surprise like last season, when a counted-out La Salle team mustered a 4-3 start to win 11 of its last 12 games and the championship.

“Teams have put a target on us. Gusto talaga nila kami talunin (they really want to beat us).”

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean the Green Archers can’t try to accomplish the same feat.

“If we think about the pressure we’re not going to play our game, so we’re not going to think about the pressure,” mentioned Van Opstal,

“It’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish,” added Montalbo.

A dent has been embedded on the reigning titleholders’ armor. The team is looking to make sure it doesn’t stay there permanently. And doing that means having to remedy what Montalbo, Van Opstal, and Sauler mentioned numerously as the problem.

Defense. – Rappler.com