The first collision between San Miguel and Alaska after their memorable title clash last season was again a classic, only this time, the Beermen were able to pull out all the stops and grab a 99-97 victory for a share of the PBA Philippine Cup lead at the Araneta Coliseum.

Alex Cabagnot hit the game-winning, off-balanced one-handed jumper with three-tenths of a second remaining and lifted the Beermen to the nail-biting win as San Miguel remained unbeaten with former MVP Ato Agustin at the helm.

Cabagnot’s winning basket came off a broken play, as the San Miguel point guard simply didn’t have anyone to pass the ball to after he had exhausted most of the 11 seconds left on the clock for the Beermen to make something happen.

“Definitely, it was a broken play,” Cabagnot said in his heavily-accented American English. “But coach said he wanted a last shot and I am there just to follow instructions. I love to take final shots, as long as it is in the team concept.”

Cabagnot finished with 10 points and 10 assists, his first double-double game with the San Miguel franchise.

“More than that, it was the win that was more important to me,” Cabagnot said of his double-double which negated the brilliant, 12-point, nine-rebound and four-assist night of Alaska counterpart LA Tenorio.

“LA played another great game. He always plays great,” Cabagnot said of his nemesis.

Arwind Santos scattered 27 points, and Dondon Hontiveros fired 26 for the Beermen, who rose to 4-1 and caught equally powerful Talk ‘N Text on top after the Tropang Texters had gotten there first courtesy of a 108-89 victory over Powerade in the first game.

“They should have been here instead of me,” Cabagnot said, referring to Santos and Hontiveros, who kept the Beermen afloat in the first three periods before providing some pretty crucial hits in the fourth quarter.

San Miguel actually started out hot, building leads of as many as 16 points in the second period only to fall into a nip-and-tuck game with the resilient Aces, who rallied mightily and even took a six-point lead in the third period.

“There was a lot of luck involved in this win,” Agustin told reporters in Filipino. “They (Aces) missed a lot of free throws in the stretch.”

Alaska, which dropped to 3-2, muffed a total of seven free throw attempts in the fourth period alone, five of them coming in succession as the Aces lost an 87-82 lead to trail, 92-87 heading into the final 4:45.

But it was San Miguel’s turn to be turn ice cold from there, as the Beermen failed to score in the next three minutes and allowed Alaska to take a 94-92 lead and 96-93 after Joe Devance nailed a tough step back jumper with 1:28 remaining.

The game was tied for the last time at 97 after Tenorio split his free throws off a silly foul by Cabagnot with 13.5 seconds left.

Devance finished with 22 points and eight assists and Sonny Thoss contributed 16 that went with eight rebounds. Cyrus Baguio tossed in 12 like Tenorio.

And while the nightcap couldn’t have been tighter, the appetizer couldn’t have seen a worse blowout.

The Texters, with Powerade’s bread-and-butter running game suiting them to a T, mowed down the Tigers with a hot middle two quarters as they built an 88-56 lead to establish a tournament mark.

No team has led by more than that at any stage of the tournament, and the Tigers lost their second lopsided game in a row counting a 119-94 setback to the Beermen last Saturday in Panabo City.

“I knew that this was going to be an up-tempo, run-and-gun game,” Talk ’N Text coach Chot Reyes said. “It was right down our alley. We are a team that just loves to run and I thought that we just had more horses tonight.”

Kelly Williams scored 21 points and had 16 rebounds and Ali Peek had a monster 18-point, 10-rebound game for the Texters.