Perpetual Junior Altas go back to drawing board in bid to level series vs. Letran

University of Perpetual Help System DALTA head coach Joph Cleopas offered no excuses after their Game 1 loss to Colegio de San Juan de Letran in the NCAA Season 99 juniors basketball finals on Saturday.

If anything, the rookie tactician said what they must do right now is just head back to training and hope to pull off an equalizer come Game 2 three days from now.

“Sinabi ko lang sa kanila na we will just go back to the drawing board and see how we played today and i-work out lang namin ‘yung mga pagkukulang namin ngayon and hopefully bounce back sa Game 2,” Cleopas told GMA News Online in an interview on the heels of their 97-80 defeat at the FilOil EcoOil Centre.

(I told them we will just go back to the drawing board and see how we played today and work out where we fell short and hopefully bounce back in Game 2.)

“We’ll just return to practice and work on the things that we need to do and correct and we will just play basketball.”

The Junior Altas are the top scoring team in the league, averaging close to 95 points a game after the elimination round while limiting their foes to just 78.89 markers per game.

However, that wasn’t the case yesterday when they were held to just 80 points — their third lowest output of the season — while also allowing the Squires to put together 97, which was significantly higher than Letran’s 89.22 scoring average in the first nine games. 

But instead of getting demoralized, Cleopas said they will identify their mistake, learn from it, and apply it in Game 2 on Wednesday as they hope to force a do-or-die Game 3.

“Morale namin is the same lang naman. I told them since Day One na win or lose, same lang tayo ng pagtanggap. We win or we lose, same approach lang sa game. Onto the next game.”