MANILA: Even being down to nine healthy men has not posed a problem for Petron Blaze so far.

The Boosters finished off Barako Bull with a flurry on Wednesday night and remained unscathed in the season-opening PBA Philippine Cup eliminations after a 96-90 decision of the Energy at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao.

Opening up the fourth period with seven unanswered points, the Boosters completed a rally from several double-digit deficits to win for the fourth straight game, doing so even with Chris Lutz joining four others in the injured list.

“We’re very, very happy about this win. We had a lot of injured players coming into this game,” coach Gee Abanilla of Petron said. “We came into the game with eight players and one rookie. But the standard of expectation should not be changed.

“I think it was total team effort. We came out flat at the start but managed to hang on and gained a chance to win the game in the end,” added Abanilla.

Lutz has a leg injury after getting hit in the last Petron game, and Abanilla deemed it wise to just rest his prolific off guard, who, like Alex Cabagnot, Chris Ross, Yousef Taha and Ronald Tubid all watched from the sidelines.

But being short in manpower wasn’t a problem for the Boosters, who got Paolo Hubalde to step up big at the point guard spot, while getting the usual numbers from Marcio Lassiter, reigning MVP Arwind Santos and big man June Mar Fajardo.

Lassiter tossed in 26 points, had eight rebounds and four assists in a mammoth effort, while Fajardo dominated inside with 22 rebounds that went with 11 points.

And what made life easier for the 6-foot-9 Fajardo in the stretch was the ejection of the 6-foot-6 Dorian Pena of Barako Bull late in the third quarter, which left Mick Pennisi and the under-sized Willie Wilson to man the slot for the Energy.

From a 71-73 count at the end of the third, the Boosters held the Energy without a score for close to the first five minutes of the fourth, and a 78-73 lead was enough for them to maintain control the rest of the way.

Hubalde, a third-tier point guard who is getting major minutes because the first two points guards of Petron — Cabagnot and Ross — are injured, tossed in nine of his 15 points in the fourth quarter and sealed one of his finest performances for the Boosters in recent memory.

Willie Miller, the former two-time MVP, tried rallying the Energy with eight points in the fourth, but the Boosters had an answer every time, with Hubalde and Lassiter taking turns in hitting the shots that did the most damage.

Alaska later completed a night of comebacks for favored teams, rallying to nip luckless Air21, 97-91, to snap a two-game losing streak and keep the Express as the only winless team in the 10-team field.

Calvin Abueva scored 19 points and had nine rebounds coming off the bench, but no one came out for a relief stint that did a better job than rookie Ping Eximiniano, the former Far Eastern guard who breathed life into the Aces.

Alaska climbed to 2-3 overall, while the Express dropped to 0-5.

Eximiniano played his first pro game and scored all 16 of his points in the middle three periods. He hit all four of his triple attempts and was 2-of-3 from two-point zone.

And what made his breakout game special was it came at the time when the intensity level of the Aces were at a low.

“He came in and he changed the game for us,” coach Luigi Trillo said of Eximiniano. “It was like we lacked energy (in the first half). I thought today we were spiralling down. It seemed to be one of those nights where we would lose big.

“It was nice that he came in to help the injured guys,” Trillo added.

The Express actually held the Aces to nine first quarter points and to just 26 for the first half, only for Alaska to score 26 points in the third period to make a game out of it and win the match in the end.

KG Canaleta paced the Express with 22 points and Vic Manuel scored 20, including the overtime-forging three-point play that tied it all up at 80.