San Mig pulverizes Ginebra, advances to Philippine Cup Finals

Shooting the lights out Wednesday night, San Mig Coffee hammered Barangay Ginebra to a pulp in a Game 7 that the Mixers will remember and the Gin Kings will try very, very hard to forget.
James Yap and Peter June Simon bombed the senses out of the Kings from afar, as the Mixers played with complete command all night on the way to a 110-87 ripping that put San Mig in the PBA Philippine Cup Finals before a record crowd at the Araneta Coliseum.
“I don’t know what went on out there,” San Mig coach Tim Cone said minutes after. “There was just too much of James (Yap) and PJ (Simon) out there. I have never seen (shooting) performances by two guys like that — ever — in my career.
“(With) shooting like that, no one was going to beat us tonight,” he said. “Whatever they ate (before the game), we’ll make sure that they eat it again.”
Yap finished with 30 points and Simon added 28, and the duo reprised a memorable performance by another tandem some years back when Danny Seigle scored 36 and Dondon Hontiveros 31 in a 119-115 Game 7 win by San Miguel Beer over Red Bull in 2007.
“I am kind of stunned (with the way we shot the ball tonight),” Cone, a winner of the Grand Slam with Alaska, said. “Poor Ato (Agustin, the Ginebra coach), Al (Chua, the team manager) and LA (Tenorio), I’m sure they are stunned as well.”
The Mixers recorded the biggest winning Game 7 margin in the history of the PBA, which had its biggest crowd of 24,883 watching the Kings get mangled.
San Mig thus advanced to slug it out with a well-rested Rain or Shine crew in another best-of-seven series for the title starting at 8 p.m. on Friday.
Rafi Reavis, whose offense has been much-maligned throughout his career, scored 12 points in the first period alone and jumpstarted the San Mig armada.
And when he cooled off, Yap took the cue and finished with 24 points in the first half in a mind-boggling shooting performance that had the Gin Kings baffled no end.
San Mig never trailed, and though the Kings were able to come back from an 11-point first quarter deficit to tie it for the last time at 32, the Mixers would always find ways to breakaway and maintain a comfortable buffer.
Simon then bombarded the Ginebra defense in the fourth period, making Jay-Jay Helterbrand’s defense look like nothing as he scored 11 points off the Ginebra guard, with a turnaround jumper making it 98-82 going into the final 5:32.
“I kept saying that if we didn’t break away at some point, it will be nasty (for us),” Cone said. “But we never cooled down. The defense of (Mark) Pingris and Rafi and Marc (Barroca) helped us sustain it.”
Mark Caguioa scored 17 of his 23 points in the first half, all of them after the Kings had trailed by as large as 11, 26-15.
But he never got the support offensively, as Japeth Aguilar and Greg Slaughter – two of the reasons why the Kings topped the elimination round – were again taken out of their sweet spots by the defensive ploy hatched by Cone.
Aguilar scored 17 points, but he was good for only seven in the final two quarters, while Slaughter, the 7-footer who was drafted first overall, had 12 points and a career-low three rebounds.
The duo combined for just 12 boards for the night as San Mig dominated the rebounding battle, 48-35.