MANILA: Air21 will remember this victory and will learn from it.
Welcoat, too, will have this loss in mind for it was one that the Dragons can look back to and hold their heads up high.
The Express moved within another win of the franchise’s first outright semifinal appearance while ousting the Dragons from further Fiesta Cup contention after a 91-87 victory last night at the Araneta Coliseum.
Steven Thomas scored 10 of the Express’ final 12 points, including the last four that broke the last tie of the contest at 87 and gifted Air21 with its second straight win and 10th in 16 games overall.
That moved the Express within another victory of earning at least a playoff for the second automatic slot in the Final Four, one which the team has never done in its short history in the Philippine Basketball Association. And the Express almost missed getting to where they are now because of complacency, a habit coach Bo Perasol said would never again happen, especially in their final two games.
“To be honest, when we went out for this game, I was expecting that we would breeze through this one,” said Perasol, whose wards wriggled out of a tie with Red Bull and Coca-Cola for first place.
Welcoat went down fighting for the first time in quite a while but still missed the playoff for the fourth consecutive tournament.
The Dragons came into the game the losers of 11 of their previous 15 matches by an average margin of 14 points. And if not for the long-delayed decision of management to let Corey Santee go, Welcoat couldn’t have fought the way it did.
Alex Compton made his comeback in the league and played credibly enough, shooting 16 points and quarterbacking with relative efficiency to give the Dragons a semblance of hope of at least winning this game.
But crucial misses by Marquis Gainous inside the final 90 seconds did the Dragons in. Compton also threw up an airball from three-point distance after Thomas had given the Express an 89-87 lead with a pretty jump hook inside the paint.
Thomas sealed the deal with two free throws off Rob Wainwright in the final 7.5 seconds for the final score. “We must not be complacent,” Perasol said when asked of their final two assignments, which will be against sister teams Magnolia and Purefoods, “If we finish in the top two, it will just be a series away from the championship.”
Meanwhile, Sta. Lucia snapped a four-game losing streak later and put an end to Alaska’s magnificent run with a 95-75 victory in the second game that kept the Realtors mathematically alive in the Final Four hunt. Lee Benson, the Realtors’ third import, exploded for a PBA career-high 22 points and plucked down 28 rebounds in leading Sta. Lucia to the rout of the Aces, who came into the game the overwhelming favorites because of a six-game winning run.
“It all has to end somehow,” said defending champion Alaska coach Tim Cone of the loss, which pulled the Aces down to 8-7 and into a fourth place tie with idle Magnolia.
“I can accept losing, but we lost this one in a pretty horrid way.”
Sta. Lucia started out hot and remained the way for the rest of the game, building double digit leads early. The closest the Aces could come was to within 31-38 in the second period, but the Realtors doused cold water on every Alaska comeback.
“It’s nice to get that winning feeling again,” Sta. Lucia’s Boyet Fernandez said after his team, the reigning Philippine Cup champion, improved to 7-8 and with three games left in their elimination round schedule.
