LA Tenorio. Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
Leo Austria now knows what to do, and Tim Cone certainly knows what not to.
Defending champion San Miguel Beer and Barangay Ginebra have had their field day in the series and after two blowout results, their coaches have had plenty to look at. And now they brace for a crucial tiebreaking Game 3 in their PBA Commissioner’s Cup title playoffs Wednesday night at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Cubao.
Austria applied the necessary adjustments to rebound from what he said was a “humiliating” Game 1 loss, force-feeding the Kings with some humble pie later when Cone made a critical error of starting with a small lineup.
San Miguel, Austria said, coughed up just “70 percent” intensity in Game 1, and that his Beermen played with a walk-through attitude, losing big as a result.
And just when the collective confidence of the Kings were at their highest following a 127-99 win, Austria turned things around by having his squad play 100 percent on the way to a 134-109 thumping.
Then again, Cone rolled the dice a bit in Game 2 and paid dearly for it.
‘We never recovered’
“We tried to disrupt their game plan and we kind of fell right to it,” Cone said after keeping the 7-foot Greg Slaughter and do-it-all guard Scottie Thompson out of the starting unit. “We made turnovers early, nine in the first quarter, and they turned that to transition points and easy baskets.
“It kind of mushroomed from there,” Cone went on. “We never recovered.”
Ginebra played to its never-say-die attitude despite being down early, but the Kings now know that they can’t have the Beermen gather steam at any point in the contest, for San Miguel fights for the lead like crazy once it gets to set the pace.
“We out-hustled them,” Austria said when asked to finger the turning point of Game 2. “This is our game.”
Though the second game was also a blowout, it wasn’t bereft of the intensity of a championship, as things got ugly in the dying minutes with Arwind Santos giving Thompson a cheap shot and Chris Ross and Joe Devance throwing elbows in one rebound play.
Cone will make the adjustments for the 7 p.m. contest, which he expects to be “chippier” because of the intensity prevailing even between the two sister teams.
“It certainly got chippy and you will see that the whole series,” Cone, a 20-time champion with two Grand Slams, said. “We’re sister teams but we’re not friendly. We see them as a mountain to be conquered and they see us as a threat to their throne.
Chippy
“There’s no love lost between sister teams. I don’t think it’s going to be laid down for either team. We’re coming out hard,” he went on. “I expect it to be chippier.”
So chippy was Game 2 that the PBA handed out fines to cool things off a bit.
Beermen import Renaldo Balkman and Santos were each slapped P5,000 for their flagrant fouls.
Santos was ejected at the 5:18 mark of the fourth quarter after being initially called for a flagrant foul penalty 2 after the elbow on Thompson.
Upon review, the league downgraded the call on Santos as a flagrant foul penalty 1.
San Miguel guard Chris Ross was also fined P2,600 for his pair of technical fouls during his verbal spat with Ginebra’s Joe Devance, who was also slapped with a P1,000 fine for second motion.
Devance’s teammate, Kevin Ferrer also received a P1,000 for second motion.