MANILA: Hoarse voice and all, Alaska coach Tim Cone still didn’t mince words in heaping praises on his team.
“It doesn’t matter if you fall, the important thing is how you get up from it,” Cone said last night, minutes after almost blowing a 20-point lead before pounding out a 105-96 victory over Barangay Ginebra for the solo PBA Philippine Cup lead at the Araneta Coliseum.
“I always tell them: Once you feel the game is getting easy, it gets hard real quick, and that’s what happened,” said the cold-stricken Cone. “Ginebra is simply too good and we knew they were going to make a run at us.
“For us, it’s how we responded and I’m extremely pleased they (Aces) came out with calm, played the game like they were supposed to and didn’t get caught up in a panic.”
Reynel Hugnatan and Willie Miller each scored seven points in the fourth quarter, with Miller hitting his inside the final six minutes even as Sonny Thoss came up a crucial defensive gem that allowed the Aces to preserve the win and rise to 4-0.
Ginebra took its first loss in four games, but not after giving it, as usual, a huge fight.
The undermanned Kings trailed, 40-60, late in the second period before coming alive in the third quarter to lag behind by just two going into the final quarter only to not get the breaks go their way when it mattered.
“We came out loosey-goosey in the second half and the game got really hard,” Cone added.
Interestingly, Cone and his Aces are in the same exact place they were at this time of the tournament last year. And when informed that after a 4-0 start they lost their fifth game, Cone took it with a grain of salt and said that he will use it to motivate his players.
“We’re trying to take a page from that and we could use our loss in our fifth game last year to motivate the players to go at least one better than last year,” said Cone.
Ginebra was in a position to creep within six points going into the final minute when Thoss came up with a block on Rico Villanueva that resulted in two Hugnatan free throws which put the game to bed for the Aces, 105-95.
Alaska gets a 10-day break and will return to action on Nov. 4 to face Sta. Lucia, which also fell for the first time last night at the hands of Talk’N Text, 100-83, in the nightcap.
Mac Cardona scattered 25 points on 9-of-18 shooting, and Jasin Castro scored 16 coming off the bench as the Tropang Texters also remained without a blemish to now be in solo second place with a 3-0 card.
The Realtors, who had control in the first half only to sputter in the third, dropped to 2-1.
“The meat of our schedule is coming up, San Miguel is next and that is where the test of our defense will be,” said Talk ‘N Text coach Chot Reyes, who credited his latest victory to the way they held the Realtors below 80 points.
Joseph Yeo and Nelbert Omolon scored 17 apiece to pace the Realtors, who got only nine points from Kelly Williams, who was bottled up most often than not by the relentless Talk ‘N Text defense.
