Farm Fresh Foxies during a PVL on Tour game against Galeries Tower HighRisers. —PVL PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Farm Fresh may seem to be getting its groove with three straight wins in the PVL on Tour, but coach Alessandro Lodi is far from satisfied.
The Italian coach believe his team underperformed to kick off the Cebu City leg despite the 27-25, 25-17, 25-18 sweep of the winless Galeries Tower on Saturday at USJ-R Coliseum
“I don’t care about the [win streak]. I never talk about wins and losses. We only talk about things we can control,” said Lodi after Farm Fresh rose to a 3-1 record, tying its final preliminary opponent, Nxled.
“It’s a process. It takes a long time. We need to become way better than we are. We need to learn a lot of new things. People have to make major changes because how they’ve been playing is nowhere close to good enough to compete at a high level in the league,” he added.
Farm Fresh tries to capture the final outright quarterfinal berth from Pool A against Nxled on Sunday at 6:30 p.m.
Trisha Tubu, who topscored with 14 points, continues to shine under Lodi’s system with Jolina Dela Cruz, Rizza Cruz, Lorene Toring, and rookie setter Alohi Robins-Hardy.
But just like her coach, Tubu is prioritizing improvement after a slow first-set showing against Galeries, which Farm Fresh won through the breaks of the game.
“In the first set, we really felt the jitters. One thing we need to work on is bringing that same level of aggressiveness right from the start,” said Tubu in Filipino.
“We’re getting there. It’s still a process, but now we’ve fully embraced coach’s system. We trust in what he wants for us,” she went on. “Even our service, we had a lot of errors, but we never lost our aggressiveness. Our goal was to serve hard and reduce mistakes. We’re also focusing on blocking and playing smart.”
In the ongoing preseason, Lodi wants the Foxies to focus on their team’s progress, not the results.
“It’s really a long-term process. It takes some time. Wins and losses come and go,” the new Farm Fresh coach said. “We know that we don’t control wins, we only control our side of the court and what we do every day. The full focus is on the process and what it takes for us to get better.”
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