MANILA, Philippines—A day after La Salle lost its crown, the school’s basketball ringleader had gotten over the stinging defeat and was in the mood for jokes.

Amid friendly taunts that fierce rival Ateneo had won a fourth crown at the expense of his Archers, coach Franz Pumaren responded with a good-natured retort of his own.

“I still have one more title than Ateneo,” said Pumaren, who has steered the Archers to five of their seven UAAP basketball titles.

The fact that Pumaren was engaging in a few ribbings meant that he was ready to look back at the series a little more objectively than the day before, when he spent most of his post-defeat talk hitting on the officiating, which he described as the “worst ever.”

And Pumaren easily found the culprit: Hypothermic shooting that froze the La Salle side of the air-conditioned Araneta Coliseum.

The 2007 champions shot a measly 28.2 percent from the field in the finals.

“During the eliminations, we got a higher percentage because of players like (Peejay) Barua and (James) Mangahas; but the Finals was different,” said Pumaren.

“People said that we have championship experience, but really, it’s only JV (Casio) and Rico (Maierhofer) who played a lot of minutes during our championship run last year.”

Pumaren, though, lauded his Archers: “I still think we overachieved. I remember even before the start of the season, some predicted that we won’t make it to the Finals because we lost [veteran guards] TY (Tang) and Cholo (Villanueva).”