MANILA, 13 February 2006 — Playing cohesively and armed with the solid desire of not wanting to lose anymore, Purefoods finally solved the riddle that was Red Bull and put itself back in the hunt for the PBA Fiesta Cup.
Kerby Raymundo was an assist shy of a triple double and Marquin Chandler inflicted damage on the Barako before fouling out and the Chunkee Giants pounded out a 103-97 Game 3 win last night at the Cuneta Astrodome.
“It’s nice to have players who have pride,” coach Ryan Gregorio said just minutes after Purefoods cut Red Bull’s best-of-seven lead to 2-1. “They (Barako) said that we were not making good decisions in the end, but this time we were able to hang on.”
The Giants broke out of a tied first quarter, making the most out of the unusually unsteady Barako to take a 54-44 lead at the half before foiling repeated enemy comebacks in the second half.
Purefoods took a 13-point lead once in the third, and this proved enough for the Giants to use as buffer with Red Bull continuously fighting back behind its youthful lineup led by the hulking Enrico Villanueva and Larry Fonacier.
“I’m not really disappointed with the result, but this will give us something to think about for the next game,” Yeng Guiao said. “We’re still up one game and that says a lot of how things are.”
Raymundo was instrumental in turning back Red Bull in the stretch, hitting some clutch shots together with James Yap and Noy Castillo as the Barako got no closer than three, 86-83, with a good three minutes left.
Raymundo, the former Letran Knight in the NCAA whose pro career had been almost jeopardized for falsifying age eligibility documents when he was picked by, ironically, Red Bull in the 2002 Draft, finished with 13 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists.
Chandler, on the other hand, fouled out with still 3:54 to go after being baited by James Penny underneath. But his 26 points and 11 rebounds were enough to help Purefoods gain complete control of the match and avert being 0-3 down. No team in league history has ever come back from such a deficit.
On the other hand, Gregorio was the last coach to complete a comeback from 0-2 down to win a title series, pulling off the feat in the 2002 Governors Cup against the Alaska Aces.
“Our game plans in the first two games obviously did not work out,” Gregorio said. “We were hounded by Red Bull’s full court press in both those games and that was the key to their (Barako’s) wins.
“The consensus in the (Purefoods) team was that if they can do that to us, why not give it to them.”
A total of five players finished in double digits for Gregorio, with Castillo chipping in with 13 and Yap scattering 17, including four clutch points inside the final four minutes.
If at all, Gregorio pulled one rabbit out his sleeve that Guiao failed to anticipate, going with second-string guard Paul Artadi in the stretch vice Roger Yap.
Artadi tallied six points, the last two coming during a string of six unanswered points for Purefoods that quashed all hopes of a Red Bull comeback, 91-81, from 85-81 with still four minutes left.
“We (players) just had a meeting before the game and we all agreed that we don’t want to lose anymore,” Raymundo later said in Filipino. “Losing another game would be very hard to live down and we wouldn’t be able to forgive ourselves anymore.”
Red Bull coughed the ball up a total of 26 times and this resulted into 26 points for the Giants, who also capitalized on poor free throw shooting by the Barako by missing just three of 22 attempts from the stripe the entire night. Red Bull, which is seeking to win a first title in four years like the Giants, missed 12 of 38 attempts from the stripe, quite unusual for a team that is as steady as the best of them in the league. Game 4 is set for Wednesday at the Big Dome in Cubao.
