Marc Pingris of Purefoods (light) vs Jason Ballesteros of Blackwater (dark). NUKI SABIO/PBA
MANILA, Philippines — Purefoods Star picked up its first back-to-back wins of the 2015 PBA Philippine Cup after beating a hard-fighting Blackwater side, 90-82, Tuesday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Hotshots head coach Tim Cone though, wasn’t pleased with how his team performed in a game where he thought was a chance for his team to develop some momentum.
“Certainly wasn’t a scintillating performance on our part,” said Cone, whose squad was out-rebounded, 39-54. “But you gotta give coach Leo and his guys credit. There were a couple times where I thought we stretched the lead and blow the game open but they came back fighting every time.”
“I wished we would’ve played a little better. And I think if we had played better it would’ve given us momentum going to our next game,” Cone added. We played a good game against NLEX but we’re still not playing connected basketball. We’re kind of disjointed we’re not playing particularly well with each other at this point. We lose focus on certain possessions and certain points on defense.”
Purefoods evened its win-loss record to 3-3 after a slow start to the season but not until having to keep Blackwater, a team not to be overlooked despite its winless slate, at bay late.
The Hotshots led, 44-29, in the second quarter but the Elite quickly cut the deficit down to seven at the end of the first half. Same happened in the fourth quarter where Blackwater just simply refused to fold and it took Purefoods to dig deep with Joe Devance and Marc Pingris making timely baskets to get the Hotshots out of harm’s way.
“They missed some shots that could’ve put them over the hump and more that could’ve easily gone so it could have been even closer than it was,” Cone said of Blackwater.
PJ Simon had 18 points for Purefoods while Devance added 16. Allein Maliksi chipped in 11 points, seven coming in the fourth quarter.
Pingris had an all-around game with seven points, eight rebounds and six assists.
“Good news is we’re back at 3-3. We’ve recovered from our 1-3 start and now we need to build from this point,” said Cone. “Bottomline for us is we just gotta get through this game and move forward.”
Bryan Faundo finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds for the Elite, who dropped to 0-7. Veteran swingman Sunday Salvacion also had 14 points.