MANILA: San Miguel Beer made this one a lot more exciting, and dealt a lot more hurt on Alaska.

The Beermen blew early command but finished off the Aces with a flurry, scoring a 103-95 victory on Sunday night for a formidable 2-0 lead in their best-of-seven title playoffs for the PBA Governors’ Cup at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao.

San Miguel scored 25 points in the final 6:42 — easily a quarter’s worth of production for teams of lesser greatness — to handily wipe out a 78-87 deficit and push the Aces on cliff’s edge with Game 3 scheduled on Wednesday night.

Alaska put its best foot forward for this one but couldn’t finish it, getting shut out in the final 2:39 to lose a 95-90 edge and come into the critical third game needing nothing less than a win.

Arizona Reid, on the night he lost the Best Import award to Alaska’s Romeo Travis by a narrow margin, exploded for 37 points and seven assists, while Marcio Lassiter remained hot and drilled the Aces with two triples in the stretch that told.

June Mar Fajardo, who won the Best Player of the Conference award in runaway fashion, scored 16 points and had 14 boards in another awesome display of dominance underneath.

But in this game, it was San Miguel’s outside guns that did the damage on Alaska, whose bid of getting back at the Beermen for their Game 7 Philippine Cup loss now looking dimmer by the game.

But coach Leo Austria is not about to let his players fall into a false sense of security.

“Two-zero is not safe,” Austria said. “We have to keep on doing what we are doing right and we have to anticipate the adjustments that they will make.”

Travis played a lot better than he did in Game 1, but still couldn’t rescue the Aces from folding up in the stretch.

He gave Alaska that five-point lead with a power move off Reid going into the final 2:39 before missing at least three attempts when the Aces look at him to stop the bleeding.

“We got the shots the we liked, the free throws that we liked, but just couldn’t make them,” rued Alaska coach Alex Compton, who also said that he appreciated the effort that his players came up with compared to the series opener on Friday night.

“It’s really challenging with all the threats they have. I generally thought we played Alaska basketball most of the game, but they just exploded for 25 points in the last six minutes,” Compton said.

“Twenty-five points (in the final 6:42) is already a high (output for a) quarter for us,” he said.

Lassiter finished with five triples – the entire output of Alaska from that range for the game – and the Beermen drained a total of 17 for the night that totally dumbfounded the Aces.

The Beermen tossed in three treys in a two-minute span from gave them a 98-95 lead going into the final six seconds. Lassiter’s two fourth quarter triples came in that stretch.

Fajardo, as expected, was named the Best Player of the Conference before tip-off, running away with his third such award with Terrence Romeo of Globalport finishing a far second and teammate Marcio Lassiter winding up third.

The 6-foot-10 San Miguel Beer franchise player topped all categories – statistical points race, players’ votes, PBA votes and media votes – to tally 1,134 points and become just the seventh player in league history to win the award three times.

Only Danny Ildefonso, the former two-time MVP and stalwart of the San Miguel dynasty at the turn of the millennium, has won more than three, pocketing a total of five in his career which stands as the record.

Fajardo joined the likes of Eric Menk, Mark Caguioa, Jayson Castro, Alvin Patrimonio and Ildefonso in the elite list.

While the BPC was a runaway, Travis posted an upset of sorts in the Best Import race by nipping Reid by a mere 37 points.

It was one of the closest Best Import derbies ever, with Travis getting a huge lift from the media votes by earning 31 first place nods out of a possible 34, to tally 1,060 points.

Reid finished ahead of Travis in the SP race and won out narrowly in the voting among players and PBA officials.

Wendell McKines, who showed vast improvement in leading Rain or Shine to a Final Four appearance, was third with 748 points, with Marqus Blakely of Star, winding up a far fourth with 497.