MANILA: The rubber match of the Star-Globalport quarterfinal series in the PBA Governors’ Cup took a far different route on Sunday night.

Unlike in Game 1 when it was all over after less than two quarters, the Hotshots couldn’t put away the Batang Pier with the same ease this time.

“I knew it was going to be tough, and it was,” Star coach Tim Cone said after his Hotshots needed to dig deep in pulling out a 101-94 decision of the Batang Pier for a Final Four seat in the season-closing conference at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao.

Coming into the game with their confidence at a high following a 126-73 series-opening win, the Hotshots took a 38-18 lead early in the second quarter before encountering rough sailing from a Globalport crew that Cone praised to high heavens later.

“Great credit goes to Pido (Jarencio, the Globalport coach) for getting those guys turned around after that (Game 1 loss),” Cone continued. “It was just tremendous resilience by them. They really forced us to win it.”

Star came up with a 15-3 run in a four-minute stretch late in the fourth period to finally take the breath out of the Batang Pier and arrange a best-of-five semifinal duel with Cone’s former team, elimination No. 1 Alaska.

That series starts on Wednesday night also at the Big Dome.

Rain or Shine, the No. 3 seed, is still awaiting a Final Four foe which could either be No. 2 San Miguel Beer or No. 7 Meralco.

The Bolts also forced a rubber match in their series with the Beermen after a 106-99 win on Saturday night. Their decider will be played at 7 p.m. Monday.

Marqus Blakely completed a triple-double with 15 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists aside from making life difficult for Globalport’s 6-foot-11 import Jarrid Famous.

Star settled for a 21-16 lead at the end of the first quarter and then opened up the second with a 17-2 blitz for that 20-point lead, making most everyone conclude that the decider would again go the same way that the first game did.

Only Globalport believed otherwise.

The Batang Pier slowly munched away at that deficit as Famous got scoring help from Terrence Romeo in the latter part of the second period, as the Star lead was pruned down to just 49-40 at the half.

Stanley Pringle joined the scoring fray by shooting 10 points in the third period and the Batang Pier even took a 71-70 lead early in the fourth quarter.

The game was tied for the last time at 74-all before Alex Mallari hit four straight points to trigger that telling spurt, which former two-time MVP James Yap capped with a booming triple at the 3:42 mark for 89-77.

It was basically all over but the shouting from there as the Batang Pier never regained their wits after taking that blow, with Famous also huffing and puffing all over the place after really battling to get his 38 points and 21 rebounds.

Star also became just the seventh team in league history to reverse the rankings in this kind of a playoff format and the first since last season’s Commissioner’s Cup where defunct Air21 turned the tables on the Beermen.

It was also the first time for Cone to pull off the feat despite his enormous success in the league. After learning on Saturday night that he had a chance to do so, Cone admitted that his players used this as a rallying point coming into the game.

“I have a special group of guys and they just like to do special things,” Cone said.

“Tonight was a really difficult game to coach, because the expectations on us were high (after winning by 53 points in the first game), Cone went on. “Human nature kind of snuck in on us. It was just a very tough game and I was glad we got through it.”

Mallari and Yap tossed in 17 points each to pace all Star shooters with Peter June Simon and Joe Devance also tossing in twin digits for a combined 27.

Pringle, the prime candidate for the Rookie of the Year award, finished with 16 points and Romeo 15.