DEFENDING champion De La Salle Lady Spikers shoot for their fifth straight win as they face the Far Eastern University (FEU) Lady Tamaraws in the UAAP Season 86 women's volleyball at the Smart Araneta Coliseum today.
La Salle takes on FEU at 4 p.m. in the main event of a quadruple-header that starts with the battle between Adamson and University of the East (UE) in the men's division at 10 a.m.
The men's teams of La Salle and FEU collide at 12 p.m. before Adamson and UE begin the first of the two women's matches at 2 p.m.
The Lady Spikers showed resilience in overcoming the NU Lady Bulldogs in five sets, 15-25, 25-19, 18-25, 25-19, 15-12, last Saturday in the battle between last year's finalists.
Reigning Most Valuable Player Angel Canino, who fired 17 points against NU, said that La Salle is out to minimize its lapses as the battles get tougher in the second round of elimination.
The Ramil de Jesus-mentored Lady Spikers are currently in second place with a 6-1 record behind the University of Santo Tomas Golden Tigresses who remain unbeaten in eight games.
"We need to find the weaknesses that (assistant) coach Noel (Orcullo) was saying. We shouldn't have lapses in the second round, it's no easy task but we need to come through because every game counts," said Canino.
La Salle's Shevana Laput, meanwhile, said the Lady Spikers should work more on their mental strength.
"We just stick to our game, stick to our system. But also, volleyball is a mind game so we gotta work on our minds — work on handling the pressure," she said.
Having beaten the bottom four teams in Adamson, Ateneo, UE, and UP in the first round, coach Manolo Refugia said that the fourth seed Lady Tamaraws are out to shorten the skills gap between them and the top three teams UST, La Salle, and NU which handed them their three losses.
"My players pretty much felt that they were able to keep up with those three teams that defeated us," said Refugia.
"They knew how those top three teams compete, they felt it. The emphasis of our preparation for this second round is to catch up to whatever skills those teams are ahead of so we can study them better."
FEU is coming off its second straight win at Ateneo's expense, 25-22, 22-25, 25-13, 25-21, last Sunday when the Morayta-based team logged a season-best 15 blocks.
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Games Today (Smart Araneta Coliseum): 10 a.m. Adamson vs UE (men), 12 p.m. La Salle vs FEU (men), 2 p.m. Adamson vs UE (women) ,4 p.m. La Salle vs FEU (women)