DAVAO CITY—The scoreline set several records—for the wrong reasons—on Monday night but Davao Occidental coach Don Dulay is hardly sweating over his team’s offensive struggles in the Chooks-to-Go MPBL Lakan Playoffs.
Somebody, after all, had it worse.
The reigning South division champion Tigers used a choking defense to make a sputtering offense look brilliant and drew first blood in their semifinal series with Zamboanga, 47-28, at RMC Gym here.
Davao’s defensive display came after the Tigers bled Bicol dry in overtime during their do-or-die clash in the previous round.
Zamboanga’s final score easily set the record for the worst output in league history, 14 points less than the previous low of 42 of Marikina, and even Dulay was initially left bewildered by the score.
“I have never seen anything like this as a coach, or even as a player so I got to give it to my coaching staff—they did a good job scouting—and of course to the players,” said Dulay, whose team can punch a ticket to the South finals with a win in Game 2 on Thursday at Strike Gym in Bacoor City.
The Tigers held the visitors to the lowest score in a half with 11 points. Zamboanga also went scoreless in the final 7:11 of the contest allowing Davao, which did not need to field injured forward Mark Yee, to pull away late in the contest.
Aside from those records, Davao also held the fifth seed to just single digit in points in three quarters. Zamboanga only made eight field goals out of their 60 attempts, good for just 13.3 percent.
“We started flat, we started everything wrong and we got frustrated,” Zamboanga coach Britt Reroma said.
Also inching closer to a South division finals appearance are the Basilan Steel, which came away with a 77-63 victory over Bacoor.