Compton ‘disappointed’ with Alaska’s defensive effort vs Romeo

Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

Terrence Romeo may have had a sleepless night as he approached his and GlobalPort’s first semifinals game against Alaska, but after his 41-point explosion in Game 1, it will be Aces head coach Alex Compton’s turn to be up all night.

After Romeo ran circles around Alaska’s top-caliber defense with a dazzling array of moves and six 3-pointers, Compton was displeased with his team’s showing especially at the defensive end.

“Apparently, the defensive game plan was to get out of the way and clap when Terrence makes a shot,” he said. “I’ll be up all night watching us.”

“We have a few different defenses and guys to throw at him and I thought our lack of talk on defense, I didn’t hear us out today. I couldn’t figure out why the leading scorer of the league is that open. That was not the gameplan. He just brought the ball down the middle and nobody picked him up. I was very disappointed at that.”

Compton isn’t anything away from GlobalPort and its star guard in their 107-93 win.

“We have to be better defensively, but if we’re great defensively, maybe we’ll only hold him to 30 (points). He’s a tremendous talent. It’s because he’s really good,” Compton said, while also praising GlobalPort for a tremendous job in the series opener.

“They deserve all the credit. They played really well. They beat us fair and square. They did an excellent job in maximizing their talent, and I don’t think coach Pido (Jarencio) don’t get enough credit in maximizing his talent, putting his players in a position to be successful, and really, guys embracing their roles. They did a good job and they were solid.”

The Aces were coming off a two-week layoff after securing an automatic semifinals berth, but Compton said rust didn’t have to do anything from his team’s performance.

“It’s my first time to be in this, and I was telling people that I was scared coming to this game because we had back-to-back great practices. Not solid, not good, but great practices. Most of the time in teams that I’ve been in, when we had great practices, they come out flat. And I think we felt too good of ourselves. I even thought we got better with our practices,” he said.

“Though it’s hard to say if the layoff affected us, it wasn’t due to a lack of energy in our practices. GlobalPort beat us and they deserve it.”

Alaska big man Vic Manuel echoed his coach’s sentiments.

“Talagang bad start lang kami kanina. Masyado kami nag-relax sa depensa at nagkanya-kanya kami sa opensa,” said Manuel, who led the Aces with 14 points and 11 rebounds.

“I don’t think it’s rust, but if we don’t come out on court, we don’t deserve anything and everything is just lip service,” Compton said. “We got to come out, beat our guys to the ball, contain them, challenge them, and be more of the team that we aren’t today.”