BUOYED by a riveting title win in the last mid-season conference against foreign guest team Bay Area, coach Tim Cone of defending champion Ginebra admitted the Kings learned a thing or two from the Dragons.
“We didn’t panic. That’s one of the things that we learned with the Dragons, not to panic when you fall behind and they did it with such tremendous work that whenever they (Painters) got ahead, we never panicked, we never rushed,” Cone said. “There are times when Rain or shine is beating us to the ball, beating us to the loose balls, the rebounds, beating us down the floor.
“I thought they played with more effort tonight than we did but we hit big shots when needed, which kinda the way this team has been playing and we made big stops when we needed,” he added.
Cone spoke after Ginebra whipped Rain or Shine 116-108 last Sunday night to launch its title-retention drive on a high in the PBA Governors’ Cup.
Naturalized Filipino Justin Brownlee dazzled with a triple-double of 29 points, 10 rebounds, and 11 assists while Japeth Aguilar chipped in 18 markers.
Reigning MVP Scottie Thompson also added 15 points, eight caroms and five dimes for Ginebra, while Jamie Malonzo, Stanley Pringle, and Nards Pinto had 14, 14, and 12 markers, respectively.
The loss was the fourth straight for the Elasto Painters, including a 98-122 setback at the hands of Converge last Thursday.
For Cone, his charges are not about to rest on their laurels and are out to blaze a trail.
“We just try to set standards for ourselves. We talked about playing at a standard, we had to really lift our game to beat the Dragons,” he said. “We really have to play above what we normally play to beat them and so we set a high standard to try to do that.
“Now, we want to continue to reach that standard every time that we come out. That’s my motivation, to try to reach that standard.”
Import Michael Qualls paced Rain or Shine with 23 points, five rebounds and two feeds, while Beau Belga had 21 markers.
Rey Nambatac and James Yap also got 18 and 11 points, respectively.
