Rain or Shine stakes the lead—and the only remaining unblemished slate—in the Smart Bro-PBA Philippine Cup Friday when the Elasto Painters battle an equally hot GlobalPort crew today in the elimination round at PhilSports Arena in Pasig.
Coming off an impressive 99-84 dismantling of defending champion San Miguel Beer last week, the smart money should be on the Elasto Painters in the featured game of a regular doubleheader at 7 p.m.
But the Batang Pier are flaunting fine form themselves, riding a two-game winning streak that counts powerhouse Star as one of their victims and coach Pido Jarencio acknowledges that the game against Rain or Shine will be even tougher.
“It’s going to be a tough match,” Jarencio told the Inquirer. “They’re on a hot streak and they are loaded in all positions.”
Rain or Shine and GlobalPort play with basically the same styles—run-and-gun—and the Batang Pier are expected to go a lot to their 1-2 punch of Stanley Pringle and Terrence Romeo, not necessarily in that order.
Romeo, one of two international revelations for Gilas Pilipinas, should have fully recovered from a bout with the flu by game time and, like Pringle, will pose as match-up problems for the Painters’ defense.
With Rain or Shine to continue to miss superstar point guard Paul Lee, the edge in the backcourt match-up should go to the Batang Pier, with Yeng Guiao surely to try and offset that using his battery of defensive aces to try and contain Romeo and Pringle.
Meanwhile, NLEX tries to bounce back from its first defeat of the season when the Road Warriors slug it out with winless Mahindra in the 4:15 p.m. contest.
That loss by the Road Warriors, which became an even bitter pill to swallow because of a mental lapse in the dying seconds against Star last week, should fire up NLEX more against the Enforcers and boxing champion Manny Pacquiao.
Incidentally, Pacquiao, should he choose to suit up, will be in a PBA game for the first time since new commissioner Chito Narvasa spoke in front on international media in Dubai last week where he said that Pacquiao “is not a basketball player but a boxer.”
Pacquiao started out in the last Mahindra game, a 94-98 loss to idle Alaska in Dubai on Friday where he played close to seven minutes and wound up scoreless.
Romeo and Pringle have been carrying the bulk of the scoring load for the Batang Pier, who are enjoying their finest conference start in four years in the league.