MERALCO hurdled defending champion San Miguel Beer, thanks largely to its vaunted defense last Saturday night in Candon City, Ilocos Sur.
The Bolts eked out a 100-93 victory over the Beermen for their third straight win and clinched a quarterfinal slot in the PBA Commissioner’s Cup.
The crucial triumph of coach Luigi Trillo’s squad enabled the Bolts to improve to a 7-3 card in a tie with NorthPort, Converge, and foreign guest team Eastern.
Import Akil Micthell showed the way for Meralco with 26 points, 16 rebounds, and five assists while Chris Newsome added 20 markers.
Chris Banchero also had 19 points for the Bolts, who held the usually fiery SMB side below the century mark.
Reigning eight-time MVP June Mar Fajardo scored 20 points and grabbed 13 rebounds for the Beermen while CJ Perez and Don Trollano supplied 14 markers each.
New reinforcement Malik Pope had 14 and nine as SMB fell to 4-5.
Defense is fast proving to be the big difference in the 12 combatants’ drive to gain inclusion in the eight-team quarterfinals where the top two will enjoy twice-to-beat incentives.
Take the case of one of the meet’s hottest quintet—TNT.
“Well, definitely our best defensive game. I thought there were still some executional lapses offensively towards the end,” Tropang Giga coach Chot Reyes said. “But it’s a credit to Ginebra. They came up with a very good game plan that really gave us a lot of problems and we just had to continue solving those problems down the stretch, throughout the game.
“Fortunately, we made enough defensive stops to give us enough possessions because we all know Ginebra is the No. 1 defensive team in the league. They give up the fewest points and they’re also top in field goal percentage. Ginebra is a double-edged sword. So we just had to pick one.”
Reyes’ sentiments came off the heels of their 91-86 decision over the Ginebra Kings last Friday night.
Meralco and TNT are showing how it should be done. Will the rest of the field follow?