June Mar Fajardo took his fewest attempts, played his least minutes and finished with his lowest output in four games of San Miguel Beer’s best-of-seven title series with Alaska on Wednesday night.

But despite all of that, with the Beermen not over-depending on their 6-foot-10 franchise player, San Miguel posted its most authoritative win over the hard-fighting Aces at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao and reduced this title showdown into a best-of-three.

Fajardo scored just 11 points and had 11 rebounds but the Beermen leveled the playoffs at 2-2 after an 88-70 thumping of the Aces, who didn’t know what hit them as their vaunted defense yielded double digit scores to six San Miguel stalwarts.

Alex Cabagnot fired 22 points, playing his finest game at the most opportune time for the Beermen, who now have momentum going into Game 5 Friday night also at the fabled Big Dome floor.

San Miguel played hard-nosed defense the entire night and allowed just Calvin Abueva to score in double figures for Alaska.

So unforgiving was the San Miguel defense that Alaska’s starting point guard, JV Casio, was held scoreless for the first time in his young career.

“We were able to break their press,” San Miguel coach Leo Austria said. “We respect them a lot and got a lot of criticism (for blowing big leads in Games 1 and 3). Today, we showed the people that we can also play defense.”

San Miguel erected a 55-26 lead with 10:26 to play in the third quarter courtesy of a short jumper by relief center Doug Kramer. And unlike in two of the first three games, Alaska wasn’t able to get out of this deep hole.

Alaska overhauled a 22-point first quarter deficit in Game 1 and came charging back from 21 points down in the third quarter of Game 3.

The good thing about losing this one is that Alaska didn’t yield control of the series.

“We got beat. Put a triple exclamation point on that,” said Alaska coach Alex Compton. “I don’t see any aspect of the game tonight where we beat them. They just clearly beat us. It’s as simple as that.”

San Miguel played like a very different team compared to the one that played in the first three games as Fajardo took just five attempts in just 27 minutes.

After receiving the Best Player of the Conference award just hours before, Fajardo wasn’t the main man for San Miguel.

“This is now a best-of-three (series), and Game 1 is very important,” Austria added. “We have the momentum, but you all saw what happened to us in Game 1 (last Wednesday).”

He was particularly happy at how his players managed to handle the Alaska press this time.

At the half, I told the team that here we are again (ahead big). This is another opportunity for them (Aces) to come back and I hope we learned our lessons (from Games 1 and 3),” Austria said.

Abueva, who was second to Fajardo in the BPC, had 22 points and all the other stars in the Alaska lineup struggled offensively.

Cyrus Baguio was good for only six points like Dondon Hontiveros, while Sonny Thoss accounted for just four markers and two rebounds.

San Miguel outrebounded the Aces, 53-35, had more assists, 16-13.

Meanwhile, Fajardo tallied 1,141 points to win the BPC pulling away from Abueva after topping the statistical points race and the media and players’ votes.

Abueva, who beat Fajardo for the Rookie of the Year award in 2012, had a total of 889 points with Arwind Santos finishing with 523 to finish third.