With six-tenths of a second left in Game 3, Paul Lee gathered the rest of the Magnolia Hotshots on the floor, apologizing for a missed triple just seconds ago which would have given his team a sweep of their PBA Governors’ Cup quarterfinal series against Barangay Ginebra on Wednesday night.
It was Lee practically telling his teammates that they’ll get the job done next time.
They have to because they wouldn’t want to be facing the Gin Kings in a deciding match.
Magnolia again sets out to end Ginebra’s season—and dethrone the Kings as the season-ending conference champions—while still licking the wounds of a 107-103 loss two nights before where it blew a 19-point first-half lead and allowed Ginebra to stay alive.
“This loss is on me,” Lee told reporters after emerging from the Magnolia dugout after Game 3, where he missed a triple badly after throwing an errant pass to Mark Barroca in an earlier play.
“I just took my chance and missed it,” he went on as the Hotshots brace for another rough battle with the Kings to make a second title playoff appearance this season and win a first title in the Chito Victolero era.
The Kings have all the tools they need to thwart that bid though, and coach Tim Cone gave some sort of an inkling what to expect for the rest of the series after he found a way to counter Magnolia’s speed in Game 3.
Tip-off is at 7 p.m. with the Hotshots certain to feel a lot of pressure with Cone telling the Inquirer that he would be willing to ground twin towers Japeth Aguilar and Greg Slaughter if that would mean winning the series.
“Their guards are winning the matchups with their speed,” Tim Cone told the Inquirer when asked why Slaughter and Aguilar rode the bench majority of the second half. “It’s important that we figure out how to win the matchups. And Japeth and Greg know that.”