MANILA: Tim Cone continues to find comparisons to the old team that sealed Alaska ‘s greatness in the PBA.

Willie Miller, in a performance that added to his legacy as one of the best closers this league has ever seen, spearheaded a closing 16-2 run last night that resulted in a 100-91 victory over Talk ‘N Text and a 2-0 lead in their Philippine Cup title series at the Araneta Coliseum.

A game after Cone branded LA Tenorio as the second coming of Johnny Abarrientos, the outspoken Alaska coach is now telling everyone why Miller is being considered as Jojo Lastimosa’s clone.

Abarrientos and Lastimosa were in the Alaska team that won 10 championships in the 1990s, including a rare Grand Slam in 1996. Both are also in the league’s all-time 25 Greatest Players.

“I don’t care how bad he is playing,” coach Tim Cone said of his well-built, 6-foot guard. “We’re still going to get the ball in his hands at the clutch. We feel we’re going to win with the ball in his hands.

“He reminds me a lot of Jojo (Lastimosa), who would play so bad in the first three quarters before really exploding in the fourth,” said Cone, who, after a 102-95 Game 1 victory said Tenorio reminded him a lot of Abarrientos after Tenorio gave him a career-high 27 points Wednesday night.

Miller did win the game for the Aces, shooting the go-ahead basket with 4:29 left before adding four more points that made an 85-89 game in favor of the Texters into a 94-89 contest for Alaska heading into the final 3:21.

After making just two points in the first three periods, Miller hit his last three shots for those six points in the fourth. He would also finish with four rebounds and four assists, the last making a Jeffrey Cariaso triple possible for 97-89 with 2:37 left.

And those baskets would form part of that telling bomb from which the Texters never recovered from.

Talk ‘N Text actually went scoreless for more than six minutes, or from 6:36 left in the fourth until the final 21.7 seconds when Harvey Carey scored on an immaterial tip-in of his own miss to eventually round out scoring.

It was such a long drought for such a high-profile offensive team, which has now been held way below the 100-point mark for the second straight night by the unforgiving Alaska defense.

Talk ‘N Text has now failed to even come close to breaching the mark for the second consecutive game, quite impressive as far as Alaska is concerned since the Texters came into the series shooting far more than that in their last nine games prior to the series.

For Alaska, on the other hand, the Aces have averaged 102.5 points in the first two games of the series, a marked improvement from the less than 90 they averaged for the tournament, counting the six games of their semifinal series with Sta. Lucia.

“We’ve been really lucky because they have been missing threes,” Cone told reporters in the customary winning coach’s interview. “We still have our work cut out for us. Though I think there will be games where they (Tropang Texters) will shoot the lights out.

“We’re just trying to win games while we can.”

The Aces, like they did in the first game, started out hot, getting 11 points in the first period from Joe Devance to seize a couple of 11-point leads. But the Texters slowly nibbled away at that deficit and actually forged ahead, 55-54, at the close of the half with Ren-Ren Ritualo coming off the bench to make six of his first 11 shots.

Ritualo finished with 15 points in the first half, but was good for only three more the rest of the way.

Mac Cardona, the leading candidate for the Best Player of the Conference award who is considered to be the barometer of the Talk ‘N Text offense, bettered his 14-point performance in the series opener, shooting 16 last night.

His final basket was a triple at the 6:36 mark, the last basket for the Texters before that meaningless Carey follow-up.

Devance went on to finish with 24 points to lead Alaska , while Tenorio had 17 points and 10 assists in another mammoth effort.

Ranidel de Ocampo returned from a game’s suspension to shoot 20 and pace the Texters, who got 16 points from Jimmy Alapag and 14 from Carey. Jared Dillinger and Yancy de Ocampo were both scoreless.