Farm Fresh Foxies during a PVL on Tour game against Galeries Tower HighRisers. —PVL PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Farm Fresh swept the winless Galeries Tower, 27-25, 25-17, 25-18, for its third straight victory and a chance for the last quarterfinal berth in Pool A in the PVL on Tour on Saturday at USJ-R Coliseum in Cebu City.
The Foxies staved off the gritty HighRisers, as Trisha Tubu and Jolina Dela Cruz continued to shine under Italian coach Alessandro Lodi for a 3-1 record tied with the Nxled Chameleons at No.2.
Farm Fresh and Nxled, which absorbed its first loss to PLDT earlier, dispute the final outright quarterfinal berth in Cebu on Sunday at 6:30 p.m.
“We’re happy for the win but like I just told the team in the locker room, we cannot show up like we did in the first set. It was not good enough for what we want to become,” said Lodi.
“We did a few good things but this is just one small step. We need to play better starting tomorrow against Nxled.”
Farm Fresh Foxies’ Trisha Tubu. PVL PHOTO
Tubu delivered 14 points on a 13-of-29 attacking clip, while Dela Cruz fired four aces to finish with 11 points.
Cebuana middle blocker Lorene Toring chipped in nine points, hitting all her seven attack attempts. Rizza Cruz had seven points, while setter Alohi Robins-Hardy dished out 14 excellent sets on top of four points as the team’s main playmaker
Rachel Anne Daquis tallied seven points and seven digs and had her moments in the third set for a 12-6 start, which paved the way to stretch the margin to 18-13.
Daquis, however, was a target of Jean Asis’ back-to-back aces to cut their advantage to two, 18-16, only for the HighRisers to commit six errors in the Foxies’ last seven points.
Farm Fresh recovered from a 21-23 deficit in the opening set as Dela Cruz forced a deuce, 24-all, before Robins-Hardy saved another set point with a clutch 1-2 play.
Daquis drilled a down-the-line kill to take the set point, 26-25. Dimdim Pacres’ attack was initially awarded as a kill for Galeries in the next play. Farm Fresh challenged the call and showed that the ball didn’t hit Lorene Toring’s pinky finger to clinch the opening set.
“Yes we still won, but we still have to be honest. We do not deserve to win the first set. You can still not play great and still keep playing in the end to pull it off but there was help from the opponent. We really underperformed,” said the Farm Fresh coach.”After that, we settled a little bit. We calmed down a little and we played our game with more control and poise.”
The Foxies dominated the second with a 20-13 margin off Dela Cruz’s ace en route to a two-set advantage.
The HighRisers remained winless in four games, with France Ronquillo leading the way with 14 points. Asis tried the opposite spiker position and finished with 11 points from six spikes, three aces, and two blocks.
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Galeries tries to avoid a winless Pool A campaign against the unbeaten PLDT (4-0) at 4 p.m.
