First round recap: UAAP women’s volleyball

At the end of the first round of the UAAP women’s volleyball tournament, let’s check out the team standings:

Ateneo 7-0

La Salle 6-1

UP 3-4

National University 4-3

Adamson 3-4

FEU 3-4

UST 2-5

UE 0-7

The Best Scorer thus far is Ateneo’s Alyssa Valdez with a total of 155 points. Next is the Lady Bulldogs’ Jaja Santiago with 129. La Salle’s Ara Galang is third with 126 points.

Santiago took the top position in the first round for the best spiker with a 40.84 percent success rate.

UST’s Marivic Meneses is one of the bright spots in UST’s woeful campaign. Thus far, she is tops in blocking.

Ara Galang is the league’s Best Server and has 18 aces.

Ma. Arielle Estranero of UP is the best digger.

Ateneo’s Jia Morado is the best setter. Her teammate, Denden Lazaro, is the UAAP’s best receiver.

The Lady Eagles are leading in several team categories with spiking, digging, setting and receiving. The DLSU Lady Spikers on the other hand, rule two other team statistical categories – blocking and serving.

The two hottest teams heading into the break between rounds are Ateneo and NU. The Lady Eagles of Anusorn Bundit have added two more weapons to their arsenal in Bea De Leon and Jhoanna Maraguinot.

The Lady Bulldogs are now 3-0 under Roger Gorayeb and word from Sampaloc is management is happy that the girls have found their rhythm. They have greatly improved their net and floor defense while Jaja Santiago has gained a lot of confidence in the last three games. Also picking up her game is setter Jocelyn Soliven who has been promoted to the starting lineup in place of Ivy Perez. She quickly zoomed to number seven in the best setter rankings.

UP has been a revelation, and their strong play is reflected in the standings where they are in third place.

The traditional league volleyball powers – FEU and UST – are floundering in the meantime. I tabbed the Lady Tigers to compete for the championship but their defense – notwithstanding Meneses’ play – has been terrible. Mathematically, they still have a chance. But another loss this second round will drop them further if not knock them out from contention.

It has all gone south for the UE Lady Warriors. They have zero wins and have been swept in all seven matches. They have no won sets to their names. This really hurts head coach Francis Vicente, who has seen his stock drop dramatically since his days coaching the UST girls team. This team has really hit rock bottom. They only place for them is up. But when will that happen?

We should also take note of two rising stars in the league – UP’s Nicole Tiamzon and Adamson’s Amanda Villanueva. They have really carried the load for their respective squads this season.

The second round will soon be upon us and the margin of error will be even smaller.