MANILA: There’s a Manny Pacquiao in every Filipino, even in every PBA team, it seems.
Talk ’N Text coach Chot Reyes made sure that they saw the iconic Filipino pugilist’s fight against Oscar De La Hoya yesterday just to draw inspiration for the rest of the Philippine Cup eliminations.
“We got inspiration from the fight, from Pacquiao’s win,” Reyes said, moments after a 90-82 victory over the hulking Coca-Cola Tigers, which kept the Tropang Texters’ strong chance of making the playoffs outright.
“We are the shorter team, but we used our speed, our quickness to offset the height advantage of Coca-Cola.”
Swingman Mark Cardona tossed in 16 of his 29 points in the breakaway second period for the Texters, who later on hung tough in the face of a desperate rally by the Tigers to rise to 8-6 overall, good for solo fourth at the moment.
Coca-Cola lost for the third consecutive night, the sixth in the last eight games, to be at 5-10 and will be lucky if they avoid playing in the demanding wildcard phase when the eliminations end this month.
“I told my players, ‘let’s take Pacquiao’s win as inspiration,’ and that’s what they did. Coke is just a really big team for us,” Reyes added.
Coca-Cola missed the services of starting point guard Alex Cabagnot for the second straight game, as the Tigers sorely groped for a consistent quarterback, much like the way they did when they lost in lopsided manner to Alaska .
Mark Macapagal filled in the void, shooting a career-high 31 points built around eight triples, but Asi Taulava, despite being the biggest man on the floor, was held down to just 13 markers.
Taulava did grab night-high 22 rebounds, but his scoring was needed in the first half when the Tigers were left eating the dust of the Talk ’N Text breakaway.
With the score tied at 13 after one quarter, the Texters outscored the Tigers in the second period, 31-14, to take a 44-27 bubble into the third, a bulge Coca-Cola could only chop down to three, 59-56, heading into the final 3:50 of the period.
Rookie point guard Jason Castro had eight of his career-high 20 points in the second period and backed Cardona up magnificently. The Texters had their biggest lead at 17 points on a three-pointer by Castro, 42-25.
Talk ’N Text shot 11-of-18 for 61.1 percent from the field in the second period while limiting Coke to a miserable 5-of-25 or 20 percent. Ronjay Buenafe canned two free throws that shoved the Tigers to within that three-point deficit, but the Texters dropped the coup d’ grace, a 12-7 run to take a 68-60 lead entering the final quarter.
Taulava’s lay-up with 3:18 left put Coke within 77-81, before Cardona and Jimmy Alapag delivered the crucial baskets in the final stretch to complete a conference-sweep after winning their first round meeting last Oct. 4 (98-97).
Ranidel De Ocampo scored 18 of his 23 points in the final two periods later and carried Air21 to a 97-88 demolition of the defending champion Sta. Lucia Realtors in the second game.
De Ocampo, a surprise selection of Yeng Guiao to the national team, also snared nine rebounds and issued seven assists in a brilliant all-around game which befuddled every defender Sta. Lucia threw at him. “Ranidel practically won the game for us by his lonesome,” Air21 coach Bo Perasol said after his Express improved to 8-7 to grab solo fifth place and stay within the magic circle of teams that will advance to the playoffs outright.
“Right now, our motivation is to stay at No. 5 at the very least,” Perasol said. “Because coming in at No. 6 is also like coming in at No. 9.”
The Realtors dropped to 8-7 and now have their backs pushed to the wall.
With three games to go, the Realtors would need to sweep all of their remaining games to stay mathematically in the hunt of making at least the quarterfinals.
Kelly Williams led Sta. Lucia with 27 points and Ryan Reyes saw action for just 15 minutes because of a recurring back injury which helped doom the Realtors.
