MANILA — Ateneo fell just one win shy of an elimination round sweep.
But on Wednesday night, the team has a chance to complete a finals sweep.
The Blue Eagles look to finish off the De La Salle Green Archers in Game 2 of the UAAP men’s basketball finals at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City on Wednesday night.
Ateneo has a chance to complete a 2-0 sweep of the best-of-three championship series and dethrone La Salle as champion in the 4 p.m. tip-off.
However, the Blue Eagles have to do it against the same team that deprived them of a 14-0 elimination sweep that could have given them an outright finals spot at the same arena where it happened.
Ateneo took a hard-fought Game 1 win on Saturday night behind inspired games from the Nieto twins, and the team tries to hold off La Salle again in Game 2.
La Salle, on the other hand, looks to leaning anew on Aljun Melecio’s hot scoring even as Ben Mbala looks to bouncing back from his worst scoring game of his UAAP career.
In the first game at 11 a.m., NU and UE will begin their own best-of-three series for the women’s basketball crown.
The Lady Bulldogs, who have never been beaten in their last 62 games overall, entered the finals outright after sweeping the elimination round anew.
Interestingly, they completed the 14-0 regular season sweep against the Lady Warriors, who needed to exhaust their twice-to-beat advantage in the stepladder semifinals before eliminating the UST Tigresses for the other finals berth.
However, UE may be four women down on Wednesday as Sai Larosa, Marieny Requiron, Erica Ebeza, and Princess Pedregosa were sent off following their role in a bench-clearing incident late into their rubber match on Saturday with the team comfortably ahead.
UAAP rules have it that players who are ejected in the game will automatically be merited with a one-game suspension. (PNA)
