Magnolia head coach Chito Victolero. PBA IMAGES
MANILA, Philippines—Magnolia suffered a gut-wrenching loss to Meralco, the team’s first, in the PBA Philippine Cup Wednesday.
The Hotshots were holding a comfortable 13-point lead, 93-80, in the final two minutes and could’ve been headed into a smooth victory but the team squandered it all, allowing the Bolts to close the game on a 15-1 run.
Head coach Chito Victolero said his team just has to learn from the stunning setback.
“It’s good and bad,” said Victolero of the 95-94 loss in an article PBA.ph. “It’s bad because that was a horrible loss. It’s good because we need to experience it right now so that the team’s character will get stronger.”
“We just need to experience it right now. It’s better that it happened now instead of later in the conference when games are more important.”
The Hotshots are at the third spot in the standings with a respectable 4-1 record behind leader TNT (4-0) and second seed Meralco (5-1).
Magnolia’s final two minutes were beyond horrendous as the team never attempted one field goal and turned the ball over four times.
While the Hotshots filled the wrong spaces in the box score, the Bolts ticked off the right ones.
The Bolts went 4-of-6 from the field with those two misses immediately getting cleaned up for second chance buckets.
“We have to put this one behind us, if ever we win our next game then we’d better forget this loss,” said Victolero. “If this happens again, at least we know how to respond.”
“What’s important is we learn from this mistake and we never repeat what happened.”