Castro helps Texters complete semis lineup

A day after being dismissed as not being the team to beat by someone who made the Final Four despite dominating the PBA Governors’ Cup practically from the start, TNT KaTropa and Jason Castro showed why they should be.
Castro scored a career-high 42 points in just 27 minutes of work on Saturday night and the Texters brushed aside Phoenix Petroleum and the hardworking Eugene Phelps, 136-124, to complete the semifinal cast of the season-closing conference at Ynares Center here.
And coach Jong Uichico will come into a best-of-five series with sister team Meralco starting Tuesday practically without exhausting his squad in their quarterfinal clash with the Fuel Masters, with no player being on the floor for more than 29 minutes.
The Bolts, meanwhile, sustained their mastery of Mahindra and scored a 105-82 decision earlier after coming back from 15 points down in the second quarter.
There were six players in twin digits for Uichico, and none of them was Mychal Ammons, his import who finished with just seven points but had 13 rebounds.
Uichico said that he didn’t take offense when Barangay Ginebra’s Tim Cone labeled defending champion San Miguel Beer as the team to beat, even if the Texters handily beat both the Beermen and the Gin Kings in the elimination round.
“No offense taken, because it is true,” Uichico said after Michael Madanly scored 17 points and Ranidel De Ocampo and Ryan Reyes each finished with 16 for the Texters. “I still feel San Miguel is the barometer of all teams. They are a complete team.
“Look, they have a 6-foot-9 center (in reigning two-time MVP June Mar Fajardo) and they have great point guards,” Uichico went on.
But on this night, when the Texters were dragged into a literal shootout, TNT was only too willing to oblige and show what it is really made of.
TNT dropped 70 points in the first half alone with Castro tossing in 29. The fleet-footed point guard, who is being wooed by a team in China to play as an import in November, hit 11 more in the third as the Texters put the Fuel Masters away.
“Jason is not too concerned about his personal stats,” Uichico said of Castro, who reportedly got an offer of close to P14 million just to play for five months in China. “As long as our team wins, he’s very happy.
“That has been his focus – leading the team to wins,” Uichico said as he pulled Castro out with just under nine minutes left which denied the Gilas Pilipinas mainstay the chance of breaching the 50-point mark.
Phelps scored 39 points and had 17 rebounds, and the reason why the Fuel Masters couldn’t pull this one one despite staying with the Texters about 60% of the way was that the local support was lacking.
Asian import Lee Gwan-hee scored 24 points, but no local scored more than 10 for coach Ariel Vanguardia, who did a good job in his first conference in the league by leading Phoenix past the eliminations.
The win put the Texters in the Final Four for the first time in the last four conferences, and standing in their way for a berth in the title series would be the Bolts, who chalked up their third straight conquest of the Enforcers – and in runaway style this time.
Meralco, with Allen Durham shooting hitting 24 points, grabbing 16 rebounds and issuing six assists, dropped a 28-8 bomb in the second quarter which spelled the difference.
“We felt that it was a must-win game for us,” Meralco’s Norman Black said after wrapping up their quarterfinal match-up with the Enforcers in just one game. “We felt that we couldn’t afford to relax and let them in the (quarterfinal) series (with a loss).”
The Final Four starts with Game 1 of the San Miguel-Barangay Ginebra series at 7 p.m. on Monday. The Texters and the Bolts open their separate best-of-five the following day, also at the Big Dome floor.