SAN MIG COFFEE ADDS TO MERALCO’S WOES
San Mig Coffee rebounded from their Sunday heartbreak with a 108-90 beating of Meralco Tuesday in the 2014 PLDT Home Telpad PBA Governors’ Cup at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum.
The win improved the Coffee Mixers’ standing to 2-1 in this short third conference, and kept the Bolts winless after four games.
“It was a great bounce back ability from the team,” said San Mig head coach Tim Cone. “Coming back from that San Miguel loss, that was a painful loss. I take it more to me than the players because I screwed that one up, but they bounced back very well from it and one key to a very good team is their bounce-back ability.”
Peter June Simon showed why he is called the Scoring Apostle with an efficient 10-of-13 shooting clip from the field to finish with a team-best 22 points, nine of which came in the fourth.
Marqus Blakely nailed a double-double with 16 markers and 18 boards, to go with five blocks for San Mig Coffee while Mark Barroca had 15 points and seven assists with James Yap ending up with 13.
Marc Pingris scored 10 points, all in the first half, right before being ejected at the 3:15 mark of the second quarter. The energetic power forward was whistled for a flagrant foul penalty two after retaliating with a closed fist on Bolts center James Sena, who delivered a solid screen which hit Pingris’ erstwhile injured rib.
Cone was impressed with the way his Mixers were able to quickly get back into their groove after getting frustrated early.
“It was a little bit of struggle for us. It was little bit of a frustrating first half ‘cause we didn’t play with a lot of rhythm. We’re trying to insist more solid basketball and we’re making loose turnovers and I always tell the players that the first sign of fatigue and tiredness is being pikon,” Cone said. “…But if we just focus strictly on the basketball game and don’t get caught with our own little battles, then we’re a very good team.”
“At this point, we got a lot of maturity, and that kind of stuff should just roll of us because we are focused on just winning. That’s what we want to be. We just want to think about winning and take the win and none of the other stuff,” Cone added.
Despite losing Pingris in the first half, the Coffee Mixers still did a good job in defending Meralco’s replacement import Mario West, as Rafi Reavis gave the NBA vet a tough time in the paint,
“We had a good run in the second half. I think Rafi (Reavis) filled the shoes of Ping admirably, got some baskets inside and defended Mario West really well in the second half,” Cone said Cone, who also thought the arrival of West just a day before helped the Mixers in the game, as travel time could’ve taken its a toll on the returning reinforcement.
“(West) looked like he got tired because of the heavy minutes. He just flied in yesterday so we’re able to get a little run and kind of break the game wide open,” he said.
With San Mig leading for the better part of the third quarter, Meralco slowly ate up the lead behind West and Anjo Caram’s 12 points, and trimmed it down to as low as three, 72-69, after a Reynel Hugnatan basket in the last 48 seconds.
But Barroca steered a 12-0 run bridging to the fourth quarter to break the game wide open, 84-69, with 8:33 to play.
The Bolts could no longer recover from that even as Simon and Allein Maliksi fueled San Mig’s 32-point fourth quarter, putting the exclamation point on the Mixers’ second win in three outings.
The winningest coach in PBA history also looked on the positives of the blowout, as he was able to sit out his star players in the payoff period.
“It was good because I hope Ping had a little bit of a rest, not by design, and James got to sit the fourth quarter out, which is important to give him the extra time,” he said. “Whenever we can sit James out in the fourth quarter when a game is going away, I think we did our job well that night.”
At the start of his third straight Governors Cup duty for Meralco, West delivered a near triple-double in his PBA return with 31 points, 11 rebounds, and eight assists for the Bolts while Cliff Hodge also logged in a double-double of 21 markers and 11 boards. (RL)
The scores: (Click HERE for full boxscores)
SAN MIG COFFEE 108 – Simon 22, Blakely 16, Barroca 15, Yap 13, Pingris 10, Maliksi 9, Sangalang 8, Reavis 6, Gaco 4, Mallari 3, Devance 2, Holstein 0, Melton 0.
MERALCO 90 – West 31, Hodge 21, Caram 8, Wilson 7, Sena 6, David 6, Hugnatan 6, Salvacion 3, Bringas 2, Ildefonso 0, Timberlake 0, Dillinger 0.
Quarterscores: 30-23, 52-46, 76-69, 108-90.
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