Defending champion National University inflicted No. 1 seed University of Santo Tomas (UST) its first defeat, 84-79, Saturday in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines Season 88 women’s basketball tournament to take Game 1 of their best-of-three finals series at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

Angel Surada delivered the heavy blows, finishing with 19 points and grabbed seven rebounds, three assists, give steals and one block as the Lady Bulldogs proved that their stepladder escape act against Ateneo was not a fluke.

Backing Suradao up was Marga Villanueva’s 17 points and six boards.

The victory pushed NU on the brink of bagging its ninth overall crown.

Trailing 67-70 midway through the fourth quarter, Villanueva fired back-to-back treys to hand NU a 73-70 lead with 4:34 remaining.

UST then managed to pull itself within one, 78-79, after Oma Onianwa’s layup trimmed the deficit in the final 60 seconds.

Sensing danger, Surada, Aloha Betanio, and Tin Cayabyab took turns widenbing the gap in a 5-1 windup.

“During the elimination round, we lost to them. We’re happy to finally win against them one at a time here in the finals. In our first two meetings, we were kind of conservative. We just had to bring back our normal game and luckily, we made our early shots,” said NU head coach DA Olan.

Eka Soriano led the way for UST with 20 points. Also providing precious contributions were Kent Pastrana and Karylle Sierba, who shot 15 and 14 points, respectively.