USPF: Strong first round but struggling in second round

USPF’s Sameen Swint takes a shot against a CIT-U defender in a Cesafi men’s basketball game at the Cebu Coliseum on Sunday, September 22, 2019. | CDN Digital file photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines—The University of Southern Philippines Foundation (USPF) Panthers was one of the teams that had a good start in the college division of the ongoing 19th Cesafi men’s basketball tournament.

With its foreign student athlete Sameen Swint leading the way, the Panthers established themselves as a strong contender for the title after ending the first round with a 3-3 win-loss record in a tie at third place with University of Cebu (UC) Webmasters.

“For the first round, we had an unexpected win against UC but we did pretty good, we did pretty good for the first round. Hope that we’ll be better in the second round,” said Brian Jereza, the head coach/team manager of the Panthers.

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The Panthers wins were no fluke either as they took out the scalps of UC Webmasters, 78-72, last September 10; Cebu Institute of Technology University (CIT-U) Wildcats, 79-66, last September 22; and last year’s runner-up University of San Jose Recoletos (USJ-R), 78-69, last September 28.

“The key points that we got those three wins is I think defense and hard work, we really worked for it and hoping we could duplicate and even win more in the second round,” quipped Jereza.

However, the USPF Panthers have been having it rough in the second round as they are on a four-game skid and has dropped out of the title race with a 3-7 record.

So far in the second round, the team got swept by defending champion University of the Visayas (UV) Green Lancers, University of San Carlos (USC) Warriors and Southwestern University (SWU) Phinma Cobras; and got avenged by USJ-R. 

Still, they have two more games left to prove that they have gotten better season by season. They will go up against UC on October 24 and CIT-U on November 9. /bmjo