Zavier Lucero goes down late in UP’s UAAP Finals Sport 2 loss. –UAAP PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Zavier Lucero has damaged the dangerous information to his teammates: He’ll sit out of Sport 3 of the UAAP Season 85 males’s basketball event due to a knee damage.
Cavite governor Jonvic Remulla and Pato Gregorio, members of the UP administration committee, advised the Inquirer that Lucero made the announcement late Thursday in the course of the crew’s viewing session.
“I’m accomplished,” Lucero was quoted by the 2 officers.
“He simply gave the crew our rallying cry—win it for me,” Remulla mentioned Friday, including that the athletic massive was in tears and propped by crutches when he made the announcement.
The defending champions Maroons battle the Ateneo Blue Eagles in a winner-take-all Sport 3 on Monday at 6 p.m. at Sensible Araneta Coliseum.
The 6-foot-7 ahead, as confirmed by MRI checks accomplished late Wednesday after a 66-56 loss to Ateneo, tore his left ACL and could possibly be out for no less than a 12 months, placing on maintain no matter plans he needed to flip skilled.
Gregorio mentioned that the complete crew cried whereas Lucero was talking in entrance of them, with the clip of the non-contact drive the place the athletic massive mentioned he heard a crack on his left knee placed on pause as backdrop.
“He mainly gave the crew the motivation it wants, even when we might be one participant down,” Gregorio mentioned.
Born from a Mexican father and a Filipino mom, Lucero is taken into account by his household because the “fortunate” little one after the household gained some stability on the 12 months he was born.
Lucero was, certainly, the Maroons’ savior in a 72-66 series-opening win, his block on the towering Ange Kouame within the profitable seconds sealing the deal.
However that luck turned ugly in Sport 2.
This would be the second damage to a significant cog at UP this 12 months after CJ Cansino additionally suffered an MCL tear final season. However in contrast to Lucero, Cansino nonetheless has some enjoying years left and will certainly be there for the Maroons subsequent 12 months, presumably once more as their chief on the ground.
Cansino, the transferee from College of Santo Tomas, was there to buoy up his ex-teammates throughout lulls, telling them to maintain a constructive angle even whereas they had been enjoying so dangerous that dropping Sport 2 was inevitable early.
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