Rain or Shine certainly did learn its lessons from the very recent past.
The Elasto Painters connected from the outside last night and never gave Barangay Ginebra a chance in the second half, pulling out a 102-89 victory that completed the Final Four cast in the PBA Philippine Cup at the Araneta Coliseum.
Paul Lee was the cold-blooded assassin for the Painters, who dropped a crippling 23-0 bomb in the third quarter to write finis to the game Gin Kings and close out their best-of-three quarterfinal series, 2-1.
And the victory shoved the Painters to a best-of-seven semifinal showdown with No. 2 San Mig Coffee, which will be a reprisal of the thrilling seven-game series for last season’s Governors’ Cup where Rain or Shine scored its breakthrough title.
Game 1 of that series will be on Wednesday, moments after defending champion Talk ‘N Text opens its separate race-to-four series with surprising Alaska, also at the Big Dome in Cubao.
Lee scored Rain or Shine’s first seven points in the third, then 10 of the team’s first 13 and finished with 14 points in playing just half of the third period as the Painters took leads of as many as 21 to snuff the fight out of the Gin Kings.
And that was before Yeng Guiao, the firebrand Rain or Shine coach, tried taking it easy and let the Kings back into the game.
Resting Lee and then Gabe Norwood in succession, that 72-51 bubble was whittled down to as little as seven early in the fourth, before Guiao sent back his two stars and had the Painters scooting away again.
Incidentally, that blitzkrieg where Lee starred in tied the third all-time highest mark as far as scoring runs are concerned, and it certainly served notice of how good the Painters are.
Ironically, Ginebra’s 32-0 run in a championship series with Shell in the 1990s was the biggest scoring run ever in the league.
“Again, we had to do it the hard way (a KO match),” Guiao said. “You learn a lot of things from setbacks (like in Game 2).
“We were kind of surprised with the zone they threw at us (in Game 2, a 79-77 Ginebra victory) and we prepared for that (for Game 3) and we were lucky enough to hit our shots,” added Guiao, a multi-titled coach but never a champion in an all-Filipino tournament.
Lee finished with 25 points, tying his career-high, after he hit his first four triple tries — all of them under heavy pressure — as he got the better of every matchup thrown at him by the Ginebra coaching staff.
Norwood was also brilliant offensively, shooting 21 points, with Jervy Cruz and Beau Belga winding up in twin digits and combining for 23 points and 12 rebounds.
LA Tenorio paced the Kings with 20 like Billy Mamaril, with Tenorio anchoring Ginebra’s fourth quarter rally when the bigger and more athletic Lee was resting on the bench.
But when Lee returned, Tenorio was again taken out of the offensive flow, and Lee resumed dominating offensively.
Mamaril, meanwhile, also finished with 10 rebounds and a career-high six swats.
Mark Caguioa struggled in the face of the Rain or Shine defense, held down to just 14 markers with Rico Maierhofer the last King in double figures with 10 and 12 rebounds.
Rain or Shine has it easy vs. Ginebra
