The University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R) Jaguars seek a win that would lock down the top seed heading to the Final Four when they take on the Cebu Institute of Technology-University (CIT-U) Wildcats today in the 2018 Cesafi men’s basketball tournament at the Cebu Coliseum.
Standing in second place at 8-3 (win-loss), a victory by the Jaguars would forge a three-way tie at the top along with the University of the Visayas (UV) and the University of Cebu (UC). Should that happen, unofficial computations have the Jaguars emerging as the top seed followed by the Green Lancers. The Webmasters would drop to third.
Only the top two finishers of the elimination round would gain the twice-to-beat advantage in the Final Four.
A loss by USJ-R, however, would drop them to third with UV and UC taking the top two, respectively.
USJ-R head coach Leode Garcia remarked that there’s still work that needs to be done in order to gain the top seed and a win is never guaranteed, especially against a CIT-U (3-8) squad that has nothing to lose and is coming off a victory over the Southwestern University-Phinma.
“We can’t be complacent. We don’t want what happened to UC to happen to us,” said Garcia, referring to CIT-U’s 81-75 win over UC last September 29. “As they say, regrets always come in the end. We were given this opportunity to grab the number one seed so we have to take it.”
The second game is equally intriguing as the University of San Carlos Warriors (4-7) are aiming for a victory against last placer Southwestern University (SWU)-Phinma (2-9) that would allow them to catch up with the idle University of Southern Philippines Foundation at the fourth spot at 5-7.
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