MANILA: Tim Cone swore it wasn’t a beautiful game, but described it as an epic for Alaska just the same.
The Aces went scoreless in the final 87 seconds of a defensive battle with Coca-Cola last night but still went on to churn out a 77-73 victory that kept Alaska in the running for an outright semifinals slot in the Fiesta Cup at the Araneta Coliseum.
It wasn’t beautiful because the Aces had to bleed for their points, but it was an epic because they did it with reigning MVP Willie Miller sitting at home because of chicken pox and Alaska humbling a team laden with so much size and talent like the Tigers.
Despite their tremendous disadvantage in height, the Aces beat the Tigers off the boards, 53-37 — 16-7 offensively — while applying a clamping defense that frustrated the Coca-Cola top guns all night long.
After rising to 9-7 overall and climbing into a third place tie with Magnolia, the Aces are now just half-a-game off second running Red Bull with two games to go in their schedule and still with a solid shot at qualifying to the final four automatically. “Whew! Just let me gather myself first,” Alaska coach Tim Cone said after walking into the press room for the winning coach’s interview. “We really needed to make this a defensive battle and I think we did just that.
“We gave them (Tigers) problems throughout the game.
The Tigers dropped to 9-8 with their third straight loss. And for the team that started out hot with a line-up that featured two imports and a crack local cast headed by Asi Taulava, things certainly do not look rosy at this time.
“It wasn’t a beautiful game, but today’s game was very epic,” Cone added. “Teams are so bunched up (in the standings) now that everyone has a sense of desperation in them heading into the final few days (of eliminations).
“No doubt, this was the biggest game in the conference for us so far.” For Coca-Cola, the best it could do is wind up with a 10-8 card after it closes out its elimination round schedule against Sta. Lucia. But even that would not guarantee the Tigers safe passage into the quarterfinals, with most of the teams glued to each other in the standings.
Miller, who contacted the disease after a 20-point loss to the Realtors last week, will see a doctor today to find out whether or not he is still contagious and can play. Purefoods, meanwhile, improved to 8-9 later in the night, jumping to eighth place in the standings after a 104-89 demolition of Sta. Lucia in the second game.
Reda Rhalimi scored 25 points and Peter June Simon added 24 for the Tender Juicy Giants, who broke away in the third period by exploiting the untimely stint of Lee Benson on the Sta. Lucia bench because of a leg injury.
Benson did return to the fray in the fourth quarter, though, but it was all over but the shouting for the Realtors as they were buried by an avalanche of baskets that had them trailing by as many as 25 points in the middle of the quarter.
Sta. Lucia dropped to 7-9 with two games to go and would need to console itself with playing in the wildcard phase.
