Cone takes blame for San Mig’s finals opener loss

San Mig Coffee head coach Tim Cone. Noy Morcoso/INQUIRER.net file photo

MANILA, Philippine — San Mig Coffee head coach Tim Cone put all the blame on himself for the Mixers’ 80-83 setback to Rain or Shine in opener of the PBA Philippine Cup finals late Friday, where they lost to a getaway layup by Paul Lee in the dying seconds.

“I feel really horrible. That was all on me,” were the first words Cone, who is chasing a record of 16th championship in the PBA, said at the post-game presser at Smart Araneta Coliseum.

After Jervy Cruz knotted the game at 80 on a follow-up from Jeff Chan’s miss, Cone used up all their remaining timeouts in the last 22.5 seconds as the Mixers aimed for the game-winner.But that also gave Elastopainters the opening to set up their defense and Mark Barroca ended up forcing a layup for the Mixers, leaving Rain or Shine enough time to draw up a go-ahead play.

“Yeng [Guiao] made a brilliant play down the stretch,” said Cone.. I feel bad because our guys worked so hard for it. They had to dig deep and they gave us a chance to win it, and gave me the chance to help and win and I couldn’t help them. I blew it, actually.”

The Mixers were left with no timeouts after Lee’s clutch bucket, and were called for a technical after Cone burned one just to set-up final shot with 0.9 tickets left. Lee nailed the freebie, and San Mig couldn’t even get a decent final heave.

“I stepped out of character. I don’t know why I called a timeout in the first place, I should’ve let the play go. I allowed them to get the match ups they wanted on the floor. I never do that. I don’t know why I did that this time,” said the rueful Cone.

But with game two scheduled just a day apart, Cone knows he can’t afford to wallow on his miscues for any longer.

“I’m gonna kick my hind all night tonight and going to be thinking about this all night. But tomorrow I’m going to wake up fresh and focused for game 2. Basically that’s all you can do.”

Cone, though, is confident that the Mixers could play even better in the succeeding games after playing toe-to-toe with Rain or Shine when everyone expected them to run out of gas early.

“This one was really sayang for us. We had our chance, really food chance, but it didn’t happen But I think we can play better than we played today. There’s a better basketball for us ahead. Hopefully I can coach a good game down in this series.”

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