BRAND NEW BALLGAME AS HOTSHOTS, BATANG PIER TANGLE FOR SEMIS SLOT

For some, winning by a margin of historical proportions should be a big shot to a team’s confidence.

However, for coach Tim Cone, winning Game 1 of Star’s quarterfinal duel against GlobalPort by 53 points doesn’t mean that much.

“We cannot pat ourselves in the back. We just gladly got back in it,” he said after the Hotshots’ 126-73 massacre of the Batang Pier on Friday.

“This is a throwaway game for them and a throwaway game for us. The real battle starts on Sunday.”

And the two teams will slug it out once again at Smart Araneta Coliseum for the right to face Alaska in the semifinals.

Game time is at 5:00 p.m.

Though he knows what’s at stake, Cone can sleep knowing that key cogs like James Yap and Mark Barroca have finally shown the deadly game reminiscent of last season’s Grand Slam run.

But the battle has yet to be won.

“Bottomline is we’re not playing a 48-minute game. We’re playing a 96-minute game. We’re only at halftime in our minds and we start at 0-0 again,” Cone said.

A better GlobalPort squad seems to be on the horizon as the team held a players-only meeting in hopes of erasing the big blackeye they suffered two days prior.

But the Batang Pier need to show that spunk they had in the eliminations if they want to make it to their first semifinal appearance. (RL)

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