Meralco, Globalport seek to arrest losing skid
An alarming slide would be snapped Friday when Meralco and GlobalPort collide at the resumption of the PBA Philippine Cup at the Mall of Asia Arena.
A spot among the top eight are also in store for either the Bolts should they end their three-game skid or the Batang Pier, who are aiming to cut short their two-game skid.
Only the eight top-ranked teams advance to the quarterfinals following the 11-game eliminations,
Additional prop for the protagonists are their determination to do a big rebound coming off bad losses.
In what is arguably its worst game of the young season, Meralco got swamped by San Miguel Beer 86-101 last Dec. 28 when the Bolts trailed by as many as 31 points.
That setback, coming on the heels of similarly stinging setbacks to Alaska and Phoenix left Meralco coach Norman Black little choice but to stress the need for his charges to remember what put them to the last Governors Cup finals.
“You have to go back to the process and work hard, that’s all you can do now,” said Black. “Try to improve your weaknesses and take a look at the tapes and see what went wrong and try to fix it.
“We just have to be better, do better, and get better.”
That latest Meralco loss makes GlobalPort coach Franz Pumaren more aware that the Bolts are not ones to be trifled with, even with the latter running at 10th.
“Meralco is a better team than their current standing,” said Pumaren, noting how Meralco made a late surge against SMB to whittle the deficit to just 12 points.
“It (Meralco) showed against SMB that it is capable of making a run even if it’s a big deficit,” Pumaren added.
GlobalPort’s situation is just slightly better off since it has actually lost three of its last four games, including a 99-101 heartbreaker to Phoenix also last Dec. 28 when it squandered a 26-point fourth quarter lead and absorbed the ‘L’ on a last-second putback by Mark Borboran.
Pumaren, who was absent from the Phoenix game due to a long-planned trip abroad with his family, said his team has also used the majority of the holiday break to fine-tune their plays.
“We have to go back to our basic system, system that helped us achieve three victories,” said Pumaren.
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