FOTON went through the wringer before rolling over Sta. Lucia Realty, 25-19, 23-25, 25-16, 22-25, 15-11, to formalize its entry in the final round of the Belo-Philippine Superliga Invitational Conference late last night at the FilOil Flying V Center in San Juan.
Gretchel Soltones fired 22 points, while Dindin Manabat had 20 markers before crashing with a knee injury in the crucial stretch of this thrilling battle bankrolled by Senoh, Mikasa, Mueller and Asics with TV5 as official broadcast partner.
Earlier, Petron bounced back from a second-set mishap to dominate Generika-Ayala and shut down its preliminary round campaign on a sizzling note, 25-11, 23-25, 25-18, 25-19.
Team captain Frances Molina and Mina Aganon were all fired up, while Dancel Dusaran did a marvelous job manning the defense for the Blaze Spikers, who will march to the final round with a clean 5-0 win-loss slate.
The Blaze Spikers will be joining idle Cignal, a Japanese guest team in Kobe Shinwa University and the Tornadoes in the final round of this battle that also has Gold’s Gym as official fitness partner and UCPB Gen as official insurance provider starting March 30.
Generika-Ayala, meanwhile, kissed its final-round chances goodbye as it fell to 2-3.
One of the seven Filipinas who competed in the FIVB Women’s Club World Championship last year, Molina provided the firepower as she delivered 11 kills and a block to finish with 13 points, while Aganon had all her 13 markers on spikes to underscore Petron’s dominance at tahe attack zone.
Not to be outdone, Dusaran tallied 12 of the Blaze Spikers’ 43 digs, making it easier for veteran setter Rhea Dimaculangan to map out the Blaze Spikers’ assault.
“I’m glad that we pulled it off,” said Petron coach Shaq Delos Santos, noting that their sluggish reception in the second set doomed their chances of finishing the job in straight sets.
“We struggled in the second set. Our first ball collapsed. We lost our receptions. That’s why we failed to create combination attacks. Fortunately, we were able to resolve this problem in the third set.”
True enough, Petron was on fire after that second-set meltdown.
Although they started out slow, the Blaze Spikers were able to crawl back as Molina, Aganon and CJ Rosario turned a 1-4 deficit into a 16-8 lead entering the second technical timeout.
Aiza Maizo-Pontillas joined the fray as she uncorked a bomb from the service line for a 20-13 lead that completely zapped the life out of the Lifesavers.
Angeli Araneta and Gen Casugod led the scoring parade with 11 and 10 markers, respectively, for Generika-Ayala, which was relegated to the classification battle for 4th to 6th places together with Cocolife and Sta. Lucia.