Talk ‘N Text staves off elimination, beats San Mig behind balanced attack

Marqus Blakely of San Mig(dark) vs Paul Harris of Talk N’ Text(light). NUKI SABIO/PBA

MANILA, Philippines—Talk ‘N Text responded how a team fighting for survival should as it ripped San Mig Coffee, 112-86, to extend their 2014 PBA Governors’ Cup semifinals seriesMonday night at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

The top-seeded Tropang Texters broke the game open in the second quarter and never let up since taking leads by as many as 28, 92-64, early in the fourth quarter.

Ranidel de Ocampo and Jayson Castro got back their usual selves as they combined for 38 points after a subpar performance in Game 2 last Saturday to lead the Texters’ resurgence.

But the win wasn’t all about them.

“I was sticking to a 10-man rotation and it wasn’t working so I figured I will give everybody a chance to play and see what would happen,” TNT head coach Norman Black told reporters. “We really played as a team offensively. The ball was really moving from hands to hands, nobody was really holding it.”

The result? 14 of the 15 players who played scored for Talk ‘N Text with six hitting double digits in points.

Veteran forward Danny Seigle and Elmer Espiritu, who didn’t play in Games 1 and 2, came up big with 13 and 10 points, respectively.

“I’m very, very pleased that the players I’ve called on responded well and were able to get us a victory today. It was a decision just to let everybody play, see who’s gonna play well and keep them out on the floor, and fortunately for me tonight, everybody played well and that’s probably the reason for the result,” Black said.

“It just gives us a chance to fight another day basically. They’re still up 2-1 so they still have the advantage so what I’m hoping now is to win one more game and put a little bit of pressure on them and hopefully get this thing going to a Game 5,” said Black. Game 4 is on Wednesday.

Talk ‘N Text trailed by a point, 20-21, at the end of the first quarter but it was a totally different story in the ensuing period where it outscored San Mig Coffee, 32-16, to lead by 15, 52-37, at the half.

The Texters sank just 35 percent in an 85-93 loss in Game 2 on Saturday night and 36 percent in the semis opener. But that wasn’t the case in Game 3 as they hit 44 percent (14/32) from the downtown and 51 percent overall.

“They were really shooting well from the outside so we weren’t able to sag or double-team on defense. Let’s see if their shooting will be the same next game. We’ll bring back the same kind of defense we played in the first two games of the series,” said Mixers big man Marc Pingris in Filipino.

PJ Simon came away with 18 points in 15 minutes while playing through back spasms while Joe Devance added 11 for the Mixers, who shot just 39 percent from the field.

Import Marqus Blakely was held to eight points on two-of-five shooting from the field and seven rebounds.

“If you go with minutes played, I didn’t play as many minutes either,” Blakely said of his output. “But that’s just the flow of the game and how it went. They came out strong in the beginning and that was something we couldn’t catch up too and react too.”

Paul Harris struggled with his shots–going just four-of-18 from the field–but he did impact the game in other ways with 12 rebounds and seven assists for TNT.