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Showing up with the energy and intensity that champions are made of, San Miguel Beer went out for blood Tuesday night and nearly sucked TNT KaTropa dry, scoring a 97-86 victory that leveled their Final Four series in the PBA Philippine Cup at 2-2 at Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay.
After leading by as large as 22 points in the third quarter, the Beermen played with defending champions’ form and clearly grabbed the momentum and psychological edge going into Game 5 of this bruising series on Thursday at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Cubao.
San Miguel coach Leo Austria is wary of how the rest of this series will go and wants his boys to do what they did in Game 4, which he thinks is their best chance to bundle out the Texters.
“We are both powerhouses,” Austria said after getting 31 points from Chris Ross and double digits from four others. “But this is a chess match, with each (coach) looking for an advantage (against the other). We have to play our game, like we did today.”
The Texters played their worst game of the series and got beaten early, when Ross scored 18 of his total in the third to boost the San Miguel juggernaut that had the Beermen taking a 60-38 lead.
Ross’ effort did not escape Austria, who praised the entire team for “playing with the sense of urgency” after they had come into the game staring at a 1-2 deficit following two straight TNT wins.
“It was very evident in this game,” Austria said of his Beermen’s Game 4 fire. “We didn’t play with that, we had very low energy in the last two games and we lost. I told the players that you need to exert all your effort and match their intensity and we can win.”
Larry Fonacier scored 15 points and Jason Castro 13 for the Texters, who never got going the way they did in Game 3 Sunday night and dropped into a hole they never got to climb out of.
Austria, though, refuses to buy suggestions that his team is now back playing the favorite, a tag the Beermen were given after coming into the series with an 11-game winning streak dating back to the elimination round.
“We don’t look at it that way,” Austria said when asked if San Miguel will be the favorite in Game 5. “I just know that this is a game of adjustments. They will plot things against you for the next game, try to anticipate your adjustments.”