EXTRA EFFORT
SAN Mig Super Coffee is in a very fine position to scale a very high mountain and reap the rewards for being on the apex.
The Mixers and Rain or Shine tangle anew 8 p.m. Friday with the former gunning for a third straight win and a very daunting lead in their PLDT myDSL PBA Philippine Cup championship showdown at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
A San Mig followup to its 77-76 squeaker last Wednesday gives it a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, an advantage which only a couple of teams have ever blown in a race-to-four.
That fact is not lost on Mixers coach Tim Cone.
“It’s hard to imagine that we can beat Rain or Shine three times in a row, but that is our challenge going into Game 4 and we’re certainly going to take it on,” said Cone.
“We were lucky to escape with a win in Game 3, but we need to be more than lucky. We need to be a lot more solid to beat a team like Rain or Shine,” added Cone.
Avoiding such a deep hole is foremost on the Elasto Painters’ collective minds.
“We just have to work harder to tie the series. There’s no other way about it,” said E-Painters coach Yeng Guiao, obviously still ruing the lost opportunity of taking the series upper hand anew after his players failed to sustain their charge and faltered in the endgame.
Rain or Shine actually had the chance to turn it around in the final 10.6 seconds of play, but Jeff Chan’s three-point attempt from way out and against Marc Pingris’ outstretched arm was off the mark.
“We were on the verge of a win and we just let it slip out of our hands,” said Guiao, pointing out the miscues his team committed and the 49-39 rebounding advantage San Mig had that cost Rain or Shine a game that had neither team leading by double digits.
“Our mistakes were mostly mental lapses on defense. We also give up too many rebounds. We will have to address these in Game 4,” said Guiao.
It will be one Herculean task.
The first and only team to return from a 1-3 deficit in the Finals was Ginebra opposite Shell back in the 1991 First Conference. Purefoods won against Alaska in the 2002 All-Filipino Conference and Talk N Text overcame Petron Blaze in the 2010 Philippine Cup, but those were achieved in the semifinals.
The last team to take a 3-1 lead and went on to win a seven-game showdown was Rain or Shine, winning it 4-1 against Petron in the Final Four of this season-opener.
Still, the fight has not left Guiao, as proven by his post-Game 3 statements.
“We’re disappointed, but we’re not discouraged. I’m not really discouraged because I know at a certain point we could just have broken the game away. We learned our lesson on that and we just have to take that lesson into Game 4,” stated Guiao. (NC)
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