SUMMARY
This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.
MANILA, Philippines – Battling exhaustion from two consecutive gamedays, the twice-to-beat San Mig Super Coffee Mixers dealt with the San Miguel Beermen in just one game and ended the latter’s season with a 97-90 victory in the PLDT Home Telpad PBA Governors’ Cup on Tuesday, June 17 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
After losing a tough game on Monday night, the Mixers paced themselves and came out slow on Tuesday night’s quarterfinals match, ending the first period down by 27-14.
Slowly but surely, however, San Mig Coffee crawled back in the second for just a 44-48 halftime deficit before using one final spurt in the fourth to escape the quarterfinals in just one game.
“We’ve seemed to get some energy in the fourth quarter. It was a really tough balancing act last night, we really wanted the day off. We felt that would help us the most. I tried really hard to keep guys fresh in that game,” said San Mig Coffee head coach Tim Cone.
He also noted that they had only early morning shoot around before tonight’s game.
“Today we just tried to rotate guys in and I tried to get Marqus (Blakely) a big rest in the third quarter. We were playing really well with that group that was out there.”
Cone got significant contributions from the bench in this game, especially from rookie Justin Melton, who scored 16 points on 6-of-8 field goals.
Melton stepped up in the absence of veteran guard PJ Simon, who missed the game due to severe back spasms, according to Cone.
“We didn’t get the word about PJ (Simon) until about two hours before the game started. He couldn’t even stand up at home,” Cone said, adding that Simon looked fine during this morning’s practice shoot-around.
“He was stretching out his back during practice. That was a big blow for us. PJ means so much to our team. That really put us under the gun.”
Fortunately for Cone, his second group held its own well enough that they even managed to rally past San Miguel and take the lead in the fourth, allowing import Marqus Blakely and the starters some much-needed rest.
Allein Maliksi (9 points) gave the Mixers the lead with a triple at the 9:58 mark of the payoff period.
The Beermen failed to keep up with the Mixers as Marc Pingris (8 points), Blakely (25 points, 18 rebounds) and Mark Barroca (6 points) scored 7 straight points for an 88-81 cushion with just under 3 minutes to play.
As the lead rose to 10, Ronald Tubid later tried to save the Beermen’s season with a pair of treys from the right and left corners, 95-90, with 34.2 left.
But shots missed its mark for the Beermen as they absorbed yet another disappointing conference.
Reggie Williams came up with 21 points and 10 rebounds for the Beermen as reigning Most Valuable Player Arwind Santos also tallied 21 markers along with 11 boards.
Bigman June Mar Fajardo, who led the Best Player of the Conference race after the eliminations with 43.8 statistical points, finished with 16 points and 15 rebounds.
The Mixers will be heading into the semifinals to face Talk ‘N Text for a rematch of the previous Commissioner’s Cup finals in a best-of-3 affair.
Scores:
San Mig Super Coffee (97) – Blakely 25, Melton 16, Devance 14, Maliksi 9, Pingris 8, Sangalang 8, Yap 7, Barroca 6, Mallari 2, Reavis 2, Taha 0.
San Miguel Beer (90) – Williams 21, Santos 21, Fajardo 16, Tubid 8, Lassiter 8, Ross 5, Mercado 4, Maierhofer 3, Kramer 2, Lutz 2, Lanete 0.
Quarter scores: 14-27, 44-48, 66-70, 97-90.
– Rappler.com
Add a comment
How does this make you feel?
There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.