De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde head coach Charles Tiu admitted that the recent incident involving Jose Rizal University's John Amores has been a distraction to the team.
But the tactician refused to use it as an excuse in their 89-83 loss to University of Perpetual Help System DALTA on Friday.
"I'm sure it has been but we can't use it as an excuse. Personally, I can't sleep. My phone has blown up," said Tiu, who accompanied Taine Davis and Jimboy Pasturan in filing a case against Amores earlier in the day.
"The bigger factor probably was losing my three key guys, especially (Mark) Sangco and (Ladis) Lepalam. They're a big part of our team, of course they're suspended and I can't do anything about that."
Tiu also credited the ALTAs, who managed to pull off the big win despite missing star guard Jielo Razon as well as Kim Aurin, who is no longer part of the team as per head coach Myk Saguiguit.
"Give credit to Perpetual, they played very well, their shots were falling and we couldn't find a way to defend them. They deserve to win and we stunk it up," added Tiu.
With some of their big men missing, the Blazers got outrebounded by the ALTAs, 46 to 35, with John Abis collecting 11 rebounds en route to dropping a triple-double with 13 points and 10 assists.
Steven Flores also made life hard for Benilde bigs such as Will Gozum and Miggy Corteza, who only had 13 and nine markers apiece. Gozum, an MVP frontrunner, was limited to six boards in the loss.
"Our toughness is just not good. Our big men are soft," he said.
"We're just soft and they're more physical than us and it seemed like we didn't want to win. If you play that way, you're really gonna get manhandled and that's what happened. Abis had a triple-double, (Mark) Omega was a big presence down low, Flores bullied everybody. It's the big ones which I thought were the problem today."
—JMB, GMA Integrated News
