Finest form yet

Sleek throughout the elimination round, TNT looked to be an even sleeker crew in Sunday’s PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals opener at Araneta Coliseum that San Miguel Beer never got a hold of the KaTropa all game long.

Against the proud Beermen toughened—or softened—by a more difficult route to get here, the KaTropa unveiled a form they never displayed throughout this conference to carve out a 109-96 victory that not only gave them a 1-0 lead in their race-to-four title showdown but also a huge shot of confidence.

It could have also given the Beermen’s own confidence a major dent.

That night, TNT seemed to have taken a page out of the San Miguel playbook by scoring in bunches at first crack to give the Beermen a dose of their own medicine.

“We just played our game,” TNT’s active consultant Mark Dickel, who calls the shots alongside coach Bong Ravena, told the Inquirer Monday afternoon, just a few hours removed from dealing the Beermen a beating no one expected would come in the title series game.

“We planned on seeing how they defended us and how they attacked our defense,” Dickel added.

Neck-and-neck with San Miguel in the first eight minutes, TNT found a scoring groove that turned the series opener into a rout.

It also helped that the
KaTropa’s long-distance shooting was on target. An 18-0 barrage in the first frame not only put the Beermen—a squad stacked to the brim with offensive options—on catchup mode but also rendered coach Leo Austria too stunned to whip out a counterattack.

“We were [fine] in the first five, six minutes. But the problem was we forgot to execute what kind of defense [to employ] when it started raining threes,” said Austria, shortly after the game that had San Miguel looking hardly the powerhouse team that is.

Import Terrence Jones seemed to be in a trance, doing it all on both ends that justified why he is the front-runner for the Best Import award.

With Jones hot and the San Miguel defense needing multiple men just to slow him down, TNT’s other stars got the opening they needed as four locals finished in twin digits and helped quell several uprisings by the Beermen.

In that blistering first quarter, TNT accounted for seven triples. They went on to go for San Miguel’s throat right in the second period and was fairly successful.

Dickel, though, noted that their sensational showing on offense wouldn’t have been possible if not for the team’s bread and butter.

“Our defense is based off everyone on the team being connected and sticking to our rules,” he said. “Whenever we do that, we are a good defensive team.”

And he hopes to flaunt it once more when they shoot for a commanding lead on Wednesday, again at the Big Dome.

“We have to come ready to do it again,” Dickel said.