Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
As NLEX was left to face the reality of dropping its first game, head coach Yeng Guiao looked at the bigger picture instead of focusing on just one player.
For Guiao, Kiefer Ravena’s bad night coinciding with his team’s 102-95 loss to Phoenix Sunday in the PBA Philippine Cup was pure coincidence.
“I’m not concerned about Kiefer’s off-night,” said Guiao at Smart Araneta Coliseum. “I don’t want to put any more pressure on him by putting those kinds of expectations. We lost as a team.”
Ravena averaged 19 points, 8.5 assists, and 4.5 rebounds in his first two games but was limited to just eight points, seven assists, and one rebound.
Those figures, however, weren’t the ones Guiao looked into with NLEX getting outrebounded, 19-10, on offensive glass and allowing the Fuel Masters to score 22 second-chance points.
“Offensive rebounding isn’t just Kiefer’s responsibility,” said Guiao. “It was almost a 100% difference, 19-10, and the offensive rebounding number was not really the fault of Kiefer alone, it’s a team thing and we have to take responsibility for that.”
The Fuel Masters also capitalized on the Road Warriors’ 18 turnovers turning it into 16 points off those miscues.
Guiao also dismissed the free throws Ravena and Juami Tiongson missed late in the game, and insisted that it was his team’s poor rebounding that brought them down deeper.
Ravena missed two free throws with 2:31 left in the game and NLEX trailing 98-90 while Tiongson missed his turns earlier in the fourth, 4:47, with Phoenix up 94-88.
“Kiefer missed two free throws, Juami missed two free throws during the last three or four minutes when we could’ve changed the complexion of the game,” said Guiao, whose team sits with a 2-1 record.
“They’re not poor free throw shooters, they are very decent at the line, those things can happen, but what cannot happen is for you to lose second chance points and offensive rebounding by that gap.”