WALKER STILL ISN’T SATISFIED
With the game tied at 93 in the final minute, Henry Walker posted up Rain or Shine counterpart Arizona Reid, spun to the right and threw a fadeaway baseline jumper which hit nothing but net to give Alaska a 95-93 edge in the final 49.3 seconds.
After trading misses in the following sequences, the ball saw its way to the E-Painters’ favor with 6.2 ticks left, giving coach Yeng Guiao’s wards a chance to tie or win the game in its dwindling moments.
But when the inbounds play ensued, it was Walker again in the middle of ot all, intercepting Paul Lee’s pass to Jeff Chan and then sprinting to their basket before being fouled by the Negros gunslinger.
The NBA veteran then calmly sank his two freebies with three seconds remaining, icing the game at 97-93 and securing Alaska a 1-0 semifinals lead in their best-of-five series in the PLDT Home Telpad PBA Governors’ Cup Friday at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum.
Neophyte Alaska coach Alex Compton has only nice words for his 6-foot-5 reinforcement, who had 14 points in the fourth quarter to finish with 31 points, seven rebounds, four assists, and four blocks.
“Henry was great down the stretch, he was aggressive. He used his size to his advantage,” Compton said. “We got some stops and Henry took over for us. He rebounded from his poor shooting game last game.”
With this win, people can say that Alaska has already exorcised the spectre of that 51-point beating that has haunted the Aces ever since.
But for Walker, it means nothing.
“I have a short memory. I don’t think about stuff like that,” he said. “The game was over with the next day and I was done with it. I don’t think too much about it. It was a bad game. The quicker you can erase that and get in to the next game, the better you’ll be.”
Both teams were on a hot streak going into Game 1 and being the hottest teams in the league made the matchup interesting.
“I think both teams came out of the game in two different parallels: they were confident, can play and beat anybody, and we were pretty much at the end of the rope, on what type of team are we gonna have, what type of conference are we gonna have. It definitely propelled both teams in different ways positively,” Compton said.
And with Alaska prevailing, a lot of credit should go to their defense.
Compton said, “The biggest thing is our fourth quarter defensively, it’s the first quarter we held Rain or Shine to below 20 points.”
Though Rain or Shine managed 13 fastbreak points in the first half, the Aces got their defensive act together in the next two quarters and Rain or Shine only managed to score two more in the second half.
But for Walker, that statline doesn’t really pose much of a concern for them.
“That’s how they beat us by 51. A lot of fastbreak, a lot of turnovers,” he said, “We just tried to slow the game down. We can’t play with them in that style, nobody can. You’ve seen them beat all of the teams. We have to play our game and make it a grind-out one, and hopefully, we can beat them again, offset their three-point shooting a little bit, and hope for the best.”
As Alaska now takes a 1-0 series lead, Walker said that it’s just the first of hopefully two more wins.
“That means nothing. It’s the first of three. We’re gonna feel good about this tonight, get back tomorrow, go over and schemes. We’re not satisfied right now,” he said.
Compton added, “Nobody has won a five-game series in Game 1. Hopefully, we can build on this.” (RL)
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