Century Queens: Lady Bulldogs devour Fighting Maroons for 100th straight win

MANILA, Philippines (Updated 5:37 p.m.) — The NU Lady Bulldogs stretched their historic win streak to 100 after they thrashed the UP Fighting Maroons, 79-44, in UAAP Season 85 at the UST Quadricentennial Pavilion in España, Manila on Wednesday.

Riding an opening quarter where they ran away on offense for a 31-6 lead over the Fighting Maroons, the six-time defending champions battered their opponents from pillar to post.

Mikka Cacho finished with 15 points to pace the Lady Bulldogs in the history-making win. She also had five rebounds, one assist, one steal, and one block.

Marylene Solis added nine points as seven NU players scored at least six points in the victory.

NU hasn’t lost a game since October 5, 2013, when they came up short in Game Three of the UAAP Season 76 Finals against La Salle, 69-61, to fail in their title bid.

The 100-game winning streak, which has now lasted for 3,014 days, began with a 71-60 victory over the Adamson Soaring Falcons on July 12, 2014.

During the streak, they have beaten all other UAAP teams at least 12 times in a row. Against UP, they extend their streak to 13 consecutive wins against the Diliman-based squad.

NU faces Adamson next on Saturday as they seek to continue their dominance in the UAAP women’s basketball scene.

As it stands, the Lady Bulldogs are 4-0 for the season.

Coach Aris Dimaunahan, who is in his first year as head coach of the Lady Bulldogs, said that though they are happy with reaching a 100 wins, another UAAP title is what they aim to achieve.

"Our main focus, we're not really looking at the streak, our main focus is daily, improvement daily, and then let the results take care of themselves and after four games, we were successful in getting our fourth straight win of this season." said Dimaunahan.

"We're not thinking really of the 100, baka kasi magiba yung mindset namin for that. Basta kami, one day at a time, one game at a time, one practice at a time." he continued.

UP (2-2), meanwhile, will look to bounce back against the Ateneo Blue Eagles (1-3) on Sunday.

Acrissa Maw and Kaye Pesquera paced UP in the loss with 12 and nine markers, respectively.

In the earlier game, the UST Growling Tigresses escaped Ateneo, 69-68, as UST bounced back from their narrow loss against NU last weekend.

Agatha Bron hit the go-ahead triple to put UST up by three, 69-66, before Jhazmin Joson scored a bucket on the other end to slash the Tigresses lead to one.

But misses on both ends of the court on the free throw line helped UST hang on to the victory.

“Of course, we commend Ateneo also for giving us a good game. Winning this by a point is good for us because we're 3-1. A win is a win.” said UST head coach Haydee Ong.

“Yung mga turnovers, yung mga defensive lapses namin, we can correct by the end of the first round.” she continued.

UST plays UE next as they seek to improve to 4-1 on Sunday.