GAME 6 ARTICLES petron blaze just showed the poise that made it a title favorite. The Boosters bucked San Mig Coffee’s own tough stance to carve a 99-88 win Wednesday and forge a deciding match in their PLDT Telpad-sponsored PBA Governors Cup championship series at the Smart Araneta Coliseum. Elijah Millsap shook off an injured foot to score 30 points and had plenty of help in the endgame as Petron withstood a blown 16-point lead to level the best-of-seven series at three games apiece. The do-or-die match is set Friday, also at the Big Dome, and that is one game Petron rookie coach Gee Abanilla is looking forward to. “We’re just very happy with the opportunity presented to us,” said Abanilla. “It’s a great honor to play an elite team like them, especially coached by a great coach Tim (Cone). We’ll come out prepared on Friday. It’s Game 7 of the Finals. It’s a dream of coaches and players.” “We wanted to avoid a winner-take-all game, too many things can happen,” said Cone, whose charges failed to close it out after back-to-back victories in Games 4 and 5. “We didn’t play really well tonight. We cannot play this team without all cylinders firing. We have to be very precise in our execution on both sides of the floor. But trying to beat them three games in a row is a huge mountain to climb.” June Mar Fajardo notched 21 points and 14 rebounds, but it was the small lineup made up of Millsap, Arwind Santos, Chris Lutz, Marcio Lassiter and Alex Cabagnot which took the team home after San Mig charged back from a 43-59 deficit. PJ Simon, Marc Pingris and Joe Devance took over the cudgels for Marqus Blakely in the fightback, but San Mig lost steam just when it mattered. Blakely had 21 points and 11 rebounds of his own, but only two points in the decisive period and compounded that with two of his five turnovers. Simon scattered 11 of his 14 points in the fourth, Pingris eight of his 13 and Devance six of his 17, yet their efforts were simply not enough. James Yap also had 17 points but he went scoreless in the fourth period while Mark Barroca, key in their last two victories, was a virtual non-factor in the scoring end after being saddled by foul trouble early. The reverse is true of Petron, especially in the case of Millsap. The sore left foot bugging Millsap all tournament long and which seemingly got aggravated in the second quarter did not seem to affect his performance, especially in the crunch after the Mixers even took an 82-80 lead. “My team drove me in the fourth. We don’t wanna lose,” said Millsap, who scored 13 of his points to more than match the entire Mixers’ output in the last 5:45 of the game. Lutz scored on a couple of drives and had a block and a steal, Lassiter had a dagger of a 16-footer and Cabagnot ably orchestrated play while converting on a layup of his own. Devance matched his conference-high of 17 with his third triple, tying the game for only the first time at 80, 7:42 left, and Blakely’s drive gave San Mig its first taste of the lead since surging to an early 11-6 spread. Held to only two charities and 18 minutes in Game 5, Santos was all over the court in the first quarter with six points, three rebounds and as many assists and finished with 12 points and six rebounds in 37 minutes. The newly-adjudged MVP also had six assists, his last feed to Millsap resulting in a fall away that made it 87-86 and got Petron’s stretch run in the last 4:50, helped along by Blakely’s miscues, fully going. “We made a lot of errors,” noted Cone, whose team committed a total 14
Posted on: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 10:13:18 +0000
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