Rain or Shine trounces Star, stays alive for a playoff spot
Commissioner’s Cup titlist Rain or Shine lived to fight a playoff game for the last berth in the PBA Governors Cup quarterfinals after clobbering Star, 108-97, at the MOA Arena in Pasay City Wednesday night.
The Elasto Painters built momentum in the second quarter and dominated the Hotshots in the final half in salvaging a playoff crack at the quarters versus the Phoenix Fuel Masters.
The E-Painters caught up with the NLEX Road Warriors and the Fuel Masters with their identical 5-6 closing marks in the elims.
Upon the application of the quotient tiebreak system, NLEX (plus 8) automatically gained the No. 7 spot in the quarters, leaving ROS (plus 5) and Phoenix (minus 13) to dispute the last quarters berth in a do-or-die setto on Wednesday over at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Losing their farewell game in the season-ending tourney, the Hotshots finished with a woeful 2-9 record.
“We just kept ourselves alive for at least another day. It’s been a struggle all conference long but for as long as we have a chance to get to the next round, we’ll keep playing as hard as we can,” said Rain or Shine coach Yeng Guiao.
“We’re slowly getting our import to blend with us. We’re going to need that going into the playoff against Phoenix,” Guiao also said.
“Wala naman kaming karapatan tumingin pa further than the playoff. This time, this is really far off from where we wanted to be this conference and far from where we were the past conferences,” Guiao added.
Facing outright elimination, the E-Painters fought with a great resolve and went on to extend their 2015-16 PBA season.
In his second game with the team, Josh Dollard was a key factor with 27 points, 14 rebounds, four assists and one steal in 34:11 minutes of action.
Beau Belga (with-14 markers), Paul Lee (11) and JR Quinahan (10) put in double-digit outputs off the bench while Jericho Cruz, Chris Tiu, Raymond Almazan and Jeff Chan had their help in starting with Dollard.
Already without the injury-hit James Yap, the Hotshots missed the services of another key player in Marc Pingris who was not fielded in by coach Jason Webb for missing their call time. Pingris got stuck in heavy traffic going to the playing venue.
The E-Painters opened a 13-point lead at the half and sustained a determined effort to dominate the second half.
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