San Miguel Beer closed out its elimination round schedule in the PBA Governors’ Cup on a winning note on Friday, but a 129-116 victory over the eliminated Rain or Shine Elasto Painters wasn’t enough for coach Jorge Gallent to heap praises on his Beermen heading into the quarterfinals.
“I think we only played 20 to 25 minutes [against Rain or Shine],” Gallent said after fashioning out the win at Philsports Arena in Pasig City. “We have to play hard for 48 minutes in order for us to make it far in the playoffs.”
The Beermen had a rollercoaster showing against an Elasto Painters side that had nothing to play for but pride as shown when they lost a double-digit lead in the first half.
It took some hot shooting from Marcio Lassiter, plus efforts by import Cam Clark, Vic Manuel and Mo Tautuaa as San Miguel will come into the playoffs as the No. 2 seed.
TNT later in the night sealed top ranking after a 114-105 win over Barangay Ginebra for a 10-1 record. The Gin Kings dropped to No. 3.
Loose defense
“It starts with good defense that triggers our open shots,” Gallent said. “Once we played bad defense, we just couldn’t get our spacing and everything. We weren’t in control, we were just wild and we were shooting crazy shots.
“But when we were stopping them, we were hitting layups and we were hitting a lot of open shots. That’s the main reason why a lot of players scored 20 points because of us being at our right spots.”
Manuel and Tautuaa scored 23 points apiece, with the latter hauling down 12 rebounds to give San Miguel positive signs that the two can pick up the slack left by the injured June Mar Fajardo once the playoffs come.
Other 20-point scorers were Clark, Lassiter and CJ Perez, who also had nine rebounds and three assists for San Miguel.
Rain or Shine wrapped up the eliminations with a 2-9 record after dropping its final five matches, a disappointing end of coach Yeng Guiao’s second conference since his homecoming last September.
The Elasto Painters actually encountered a lot of challenges through the 47th season that began by missing the Philippine Cup playoffs when Chris Gavina was still calling the shots.