It will take a statement victory for Tropang Giga to be on an equal footing with Gin Kings

Troy Rosario (right) finally finds his groove and the Tropang Giga find their way around Japeth Aguilar and the Gin Kings. —PHOTOS COURTESY OF PBA IMAGES

There are a lot of people in TNT who believe that they should be in control of the series had it not been for big endgame collapses.

They’re just not dwelling on it.

“You have to move on quickly,” Jayson Castro, TNT’s fleet-footed playmaker, told reporters shortly after the Tropang Giga routed Barangay Ginebra, 88-67, in Game 3 of the PBA Philippine Cup Finals late Friday evening.

“We thought about it,” TNT coach Bong Ravena said, admitting there were moments he allowed himself to think of how drastically different things would have been if they scored more than just a single field goal in overtime in Game 1. Or if they made around half of the seven shots they missed in the last four minutes of Game 2.

“But we had to deal with the 0-2 [hole].”

The deficit doesn’t look that daunting now. TNT trimmed Ginebra’s series lead to 2-1, with a shot at tying the best-of-seven affair in Game 4 on Sunday at Angeles University Foundation.

But to say the Tropang Giga are just a step behind the Kings in the series might be quite a stretch. After all, Ginebra coach Tim Cone said there would be games like this in a series, when teams would dig as deep as they want and still come up empty.

“You just have one or two games where you just don’t have the energy. You’d take so much effort to win the game before—or in this case, the two games before,” the two-time Grand Slam mentor told reporters here at Smart Clark Giga City.

And Cone saw the loss coming.

“It wasn’t unexpected—our performance tonight,” he said on Friday while making his way to his hotel room. “As I’ve said, I could see it in practice [that the players were tired]. If I could just go to each player and blow energy to each one of their mouths, I’d do that.”

And it showed in Game 3. Stanley Pringle managed a big burst of energy at the start, scoring five points in the first two minutes after the opening tip. He scored a paltry six the rest of the way, air-balling two attempts. He finished with 11 points after averaging 29 in the first two outings. The other facets of his performance dipped remarkably too. From 6.5 rebounds and 7.5 assists in Games 1 and 2 to 4 and 2 in Game 3.

TNT, needing players to step up for the absent Ray Parks Jr., who is out due to a strained calf and whose status is still uncertain for Game 4, rediscovered a certain Troy Rosario—whose face had been on “missing” leaflets since the playoffs.

Rosario came alive with 15 points and two blocks, making seven of nine attempts from the field before waxing philosophical during a postgame TV interview.

“It’s just like this year, how we started with a difficult situation,” Rosario said in Filipino. “It’s like this bubble. We [went through a lot] before we could get here. We just really need to keep fighting.”

“I’m glad that my shots fell,” the TNT forward added. “I really wanted to assert myself because without Ray, we all need to step up.”

Castro, who had two bricked threes, a missed free throw and a turnover during Game 2’s endgame collapse, finished with 15 points and 10 assists while keying big TNT runs that gave the team leads of as many as 22.

“We really learned a lot from our previous games,” said Castro.

But did they, really? Were the Tropang Giga able to address the meltdown that denied them victories in the first two games? Or were they just able to piece together a tidy barrier that was too large for a winded Ginebra squad to melt?

Perhaps it would be wise to heed RR Pogoy’s advice going into Game 4’s 6 p.m. tipoff.

“We have to stay steady, especially in the fourth quarter, where we usually tend to collapse,” Pogoy said.

Perhaps the big win hardly matters in the big picture. Cone certainly isn’t sweating the rout—and rightly so.

“In a series, there are no ‘pogi points’ for blowing a team out. You don’t get an extra win blowing a team out. You just get a win,” Cone said.

“We’re not here to win a game, and I tell the players that all the time,” he added. “We’re here not to win a game, we’re here to win a series.”

“We’re still in control of this series. They broke whatever little momentum we have and we’ll see if we could get it back.”

And as far as that series goes, it’s one thing to say that TNT has shaved a game off Ginebra’s previous 2-0 cushion. It’s another thing to say the Tropang Giga are as good as the Kings have been before Game 3.

Only a statement victory against a Ginebra squad that has caught its breath can narrow that gap.