GAMES TOMORROW
(Ninoy Aquino Stadium)
5 p.m. – Blackwater vs. Rain or Shine
7:30 p.m. – Ginebra vs. NLEX
WHEN the stakes were high, TNT shooters Simon Enciso and Roger Pogoy dialed in two straight backbreaking three-pointers—first on the left corner and the right, the dagger that struck San Miguel Beer last Sunday night.
The Tropang 5G have seemingly found anew the killer instinct that was nowhere to be found in their first three games of the season-ending tilt.
Ask TNT coach Chot Reyes, who said his charges pondered long and hard to snap out of their funk.
“Obviously, there’s relief to finally get a win, but it was just a matter of us taking a close look at ourselves, just some real brutal reflection and before the game, I told the players, maybe we have it all wrong,” Reyes said. “Maybe we were trying to find the old TNT game, we were talking about why we can’t do this, why we can’t do that in our first three games, until we realized that we can’t go back to the old TNT game because this is a vastly different team.
“Without Jayson (Castro) and Rondae (Hollis-Jefferson), this is a very different team. So, I told the players before the game, let’s play our game with the players in this room, with what we have. I think that simple realization worked wonders with the way the players played, their effort and their fight,” he added.
Reyes spoke after the grand slam-seeking Tropang 5G held off the Beermen 89-84 for their maiden win in the PBA Philippine Cup.
TNT simply showed up the way it showed be—a different squad from the last two conferences it ruled, but with the same grit and resolve, notwithstanding the crucial absences of star playmaker Jayson Castro (knee) and two-time best import Rondae Hollis-Jefferson since it’s an all-Filipino tourney.
“We just need to find our bearings and like Calvin (Oftana) said, let’s show up and the team that showed up is a different team. This is the team that we’re going to go to war with in this conference and we have to make sure that we keep that, sustain and improve on the game that we played,” Reyes said.
“Certainly, it’s a step in the right direction. But our effort in the next few games is going to tell if we have started to turn that corner. But like I said, this is just the first step. We’re happy, but we cannot be content with this.”
Oftana dazzled with 23 points and a career-high 21 rebounds, on top of six assists while Rey Nambatac chimed in 15 markers and five dimes.
Pogoy also had 14 and six while Enciso, who used to play for SMB, tallied 13 points on three treys as TNT redeemed itself from an 81-95 loss to Phoenix last week and improved to 1-3.
The Beermen failed to do an encore to a 104-93 triumph over the Ginebra Kings last April 25 and slipped to 3-2.
CJ Perez paced SMB with 26 points and six caroms while reigning eight-time MVP June Mar Fajardo got 21 and 14.
Juami Tiongson and Marcio Lassiter also contributed 15 and 14 markers, respectively for the Beermen.
Reyes’ next challenge to his team is to sustain what it gained and continue writing a storybook ending towards a cherished goal.
“I just told the players, let’s write our own story. Let’s not write a story from the past or whatever,” he said. “Let’s write our own story and hopefully, this is the first step, the first chapter in that story.”
