Meralco Bolts showed little let-up in its last elimination round game, pushing Barangay Ginebra to the brink with a wire-to-wire 79-66 victory last 23 September in the PBA Philippine Cup at the Don Honorio Ventura State University Gym in Bacolor, Pampanga.
Mac Belo and Alvin Pasaol each tallied 15 points and seven boards in leading the Bolts past the short-handed defending champions and into a fourth straight win since a two-week forced break due to the league's health and safety protocols.
Meralco's follow-up to a much-harder 104-101 win over NLEX just the day before, which assured it of the No. 2 spot behind TNT going into the quarterfinals, gave it a 9-2 record at the end of its eliminations stint and its best elims finish ever in the import-less tournament.
To think it came at the expense of a Ginebra squad that beat Meralco in their three recent Governors' Cup finals meetings and also booted coach Norman Black and his wards out of last year's semifinals in the Angeles City bubble certainly made the victory sweeter.
Black, though, didn't say it out loud. "We really just want to have the momentum going into the playoffs," he said. "We didn't want a loss going to the playoffs."
The loss, its seventh against only four wins, dropped Ginebra into a tie at eighth with Phoenix Super LPG and Terrafirma and breathed life into both the Fuel Masters' and Dyip's bids.
The result of the NorthPort-Alaska match later that night would determine Phoenix's foe in the knockout on Saturday for the last quarterfinals berth. If the Batang Pier win, then it would be Ginebra. Should the Aces prevail, then it would be Phoenix versus Terrafirma.
A game it would rather forget pushed Ginebra in danger of being the first all-Filipino champion since 1999 winner Formula Shell to fail in its title-retention bid the following year.
Stanley Pringle gallantly tried, finishing with 19 points. So did Christian Standhardinger, who wound up with 17 points and 14 rebounds. But the absence of the injured Japeth Aguilar and rebounding demon Scottie Thompson (safety protocols), led to Ginebra getting beaten badly off the boards 36-63, as well as 7-23 on second chance points.
The output was also the Kings' lowest in the conference, largely brought about by a 30-of-74 field shooting.
No comments:
Post a Comment