San Beda University head coach Boyet Fernandez said his team will move forward despite absorbing a 68-54 upset loss to Mapua — their first in the NCAA Season 97 men's basketball tournament — on Saturday.
After all, in basketball, sometimes you're a winner and sometimes you're the loser.
"We'll take it as a lesson for all of us. We'll look at the tape tonight and we'll see where we had some mistakes. 'Yung stats hindi naman glaring eh, it's just that we only had six assists today and we missed so many shots," said Fernandez.
"We'll just go back to the drawing board and prepare ourselves against Saint Benilde in the next two games. I know it will be tough for us but well, ganyan talaga eh. Bilog ang bola."
San Beda never got its momentum going against Mapua.
They trailed by as many as 16 points late in the fourth quarter after Paolo Hernandez sank a basket, 64-48. The Red Lions never recovered from there.
"There were some miscommunications in the execution. We just have to learn from that."
James Kwekuteye and Ralph Penuela were bright spots for San Beda with the Filipino-Canadian dropping a double-double of 14 points and11 rebounds.
Penuela, who led the first half for San Beda, chipped in 13 markers, three assists, and two steals but it was not enough against a Mapua squad that seemingly had an answer for everything the Red Lions threw at them.
"Congratulations to Mapua, they did a good job. Coach Randy did a good job today and we simply lost this game."
—JMB, GMA News
