MANILA, 14 December 2006 — It looks like Welcoat may have just ran out of bright colors to paint.
The Dragons’ collective heads were placed on the chopping block last night after San Miguel cruised to a 97-85 victory in the PBA Philippine Cup at the Araneta Coliseum.
While inching closer towards bagging an automatic semifinal seat after climbing to 11-5 overall, the Beermen pushed the Dragons on cliff’s edge by dealing the rookie squad their ninth straight loss in a 3-14 card.
Only one team will get the boot after this long elimination round, and Welcoat just dropped a full game behind the ninth-running Coca-Cola squad with just a game left in its schedule.
Danny Seigle exploded for 28 points, hitting all 11 free throw attempts awarded him, in less than three quarters on the floor and three others tossed in 10 or more for coach Chot Reyes, whose squad now seems ready to grab the No. 1 spot. Not bad for a team that opened up 0-3 and made a drastic early-tournament trade to right the ship, so to speak.
Only idle Barangay Ginebra has a better record at the moment than the Beermen, who could barge into the Final Four outright with a sweep of their last two games. A split of its assignments against Talk ‘N Text and Air21 would guarantee San Miguel of at least a playoff for the No. 2 spot.
“But if you ask me, a quarterfinal seat would be good enough,” Reyes said, wary that a long rest would take the edge away from his rampaging Beermen. Barging automatically into the semifinals would mean rest of at least two weeks for a team, and three if the quarterfinals pairings reach its maximum of five games.
Meanwhile, Welcoat’s only chance of playing past these eliminations lie on losses by the Tigers in their last two games and a win by the Dragons in their final assignment next week for both to finish at 4-14.
“But I am not enthusiastic anymore,” Welcoat coach Leo Austria said. . “In fact, we’ve already set a meeting to assess the factors that could add to the strength of the team next conference.”
Austria said that the team will try dipping its hands in the free agent market and shop around for a formidable reinforcement for the next tournament. Jay-R Reyes, the promising center out of the University of the Philippines, shot 15 points to lead all Welcoat shooters.
Purefoods tore Coca-Cola to shreds in the second game, riding an explosive second half to post a 114-73 rout of the Tigers.
Scrappy forward Peter June Simon finished with a career-high 32 points and Jun Limpot tallied 15 points in the first half to toss in 23 as the defending champion Chunkee Giants improved to 10-6.
Purefoods thus climbed into a third place tie with idle Red Bull and Sta. Lucia, still very much in the hunt for an outright Final Four seat, while the Tigers dropped to 4-13 and kept the Dragons alive. James Yap scored 13 points and Paul Artadi added 10 as Purefoods broke the game wide open by scoring 91 points in the final three periods. Coke had kept itself in the fight after the first 12 minutes, trailing by just three, 20-23, after seven points from John Arigo and four each from Dennis Miranda and acrobatic rookie Joseph Yeo.
But Simon and Limpot scored 11 and 10, respectively in the second and all hopes of the Tigers overhauling a 20-point deficit after three quarters vanished after they were held to just 10 points in the fourth period.
