PBA: Bolts outhustle Aces for much-needed win

Sunday Salvacion and Cliff Hodge of Meralco (light) vs Calvin Abueva and Sonny Thoss of Alaska (dark). PBA IMAGE by Nuki Sabio

MANILA, Philippines — Meralco didn’t give Alaska an inch and finished with a much-needed 74-65 victory Friday in the 2014 PLDT MyDSL PBA Philippine Cup at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

The Bolts managed to frustrate all of the Aces’ attempts at a comeback in the second half as they protected a double-digit lead.

Scoring champion Gary David did the bulk of the work on offense, drilling in 24 points, 10 in the third quarter where they pushed the lead to as big as 14.

Needing a boost to their quarterfinals bid, Meralco made sure it would outhustle Alaska in a heated affair, which saw Jared Dillinger and Calvin Abueva nearly coming to blows.

“I told them to be ready for war. It’s not gonna be easy against Alaska who’s also fighting like us,” said head coach Ryan Gregorio.

With Meralco up 62-52 barely a minute into the payoff period, Dillinger took a hard hit to the face from Abueva as he was rising for a layup, then another hit from the Aces forward as they both slammed to the baseline railing.

Dillinger ended up with a bloodied nose and a bruise under his left eye, but still went on to provide the spark for the Bolts as they wrapped up their fifth win against seven losses.

“When we saw JD had his bloody nose and he just wiped it, it was an incredible signal for us to just finish it off,” said Gregorio of the incident.

Dillinger added 10 points and seven rebounds for Meralco, which held Alaska to just 18.2 percent shooting from downtown.

“We like this win because of the way we defended. We limited them to 63. That’s what you call tenacity on defense,” Gregorio added.

Jvee Casio knocked down three triples for a 15-point performance, but it wasn’t a great night for him as well as he only missed seven from downtown.

Sonny Thoss and Gabby Espinas scored 14 and 13, respectively for Alaska, which dropped to 4-8.