De La Salle University suffered yet another blow after sweet-shooting big man Mason Amos crashed with a knee injury in the crucial stretch of their loss to National University in Season 88 University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) men’s basketball tournament on Sunday.

La Salle coach Topex Robinson broke the sorry news, saying that the 6-foot-7 Amos suffered a medial collateral ligament (MCL) tear after colliding with Gelo Tolentino at the 6:51 mark of the fourth quarter of their 78-82 loss to the Bulldogs.

No timetable has been released but reports have it that Amos will be out for six to eight weeks, which means that the earliest he could return will be on 23 November when the Green Archers are already in the heat of their title chase.

Amos’ absence is definitely a huge blow to La Salle’s bid to regain the title.

In his five games with the Green Archers, he averaged 8.2 points, 3.2 assists and 2.8 rebounds while doing a good job stretching the defense with his impressive perimeter game.

The Green Archers, however, are having a rough performance entering the final stretch of the first round of eliminations.

They dropped three of their first five games to fall in the fifth spot behind National University, University of Santo Tomas (UST), University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University.

In short, if the Final Four starts today, the Green Archers will not definitely make it, a disappointing possibility despite the very successful recruitment coup they waged in the off-season.

Robinson, who pulled off a surprise when he led the Green Archers to the title in his rookie season two years ago, stressed that there’s nothing to worry as struggling and losing their key big man is all “part of the game.”

“Based on what he (Amos) told us, he heard a pop in his knee,” said Robinson, a few hours before Amos underwent a magnetic resonance imaging to determine the extent of the injury.

“It’s accidental, it can happen to anybody. At this point, we’re just hoping that he’ll be okay.”

But what Robinson needs to seriously address is their struggles, especially from the free throw line, where they are making only 58.2 percent of their attempts.

In fact, in their setback to the Bulldogs, they missed 10 out of 33 shots they took from the charity stripe, something that could have spelled the difference in their four-point loss.

Robinson vowed to come up with a better performance when they face the equally-struggling University of the East tomorrow at the Mall of Asia Arena.