Hopeful, gritty FiberXers live to fight another day

MANILA, Philippines -- Hope and grit.

On the cusp of elimination, the Converge FiberXers banked on hope and grit as they forced a Game 4 against the San Miguel Beermen in their PBA Governors'Cup quarterfinals series.

Facing elimination in Game 3 of the best-of-five quarterfinal series on Monday, Converge trailed by 27 points, 56-83, in the third quarter against the mighty Beermen.

Slowly but surely, they were able to nip away the lead. However, they still trailed by 15 points in the fourth quarter, 80-95, with 8:19 remaining after an EJ Anosike jumper.

Converge, then, unleashed a 24-9 run to tie things up at 104. A 3-pointer by Don Trollano pushed San Miguel's lead to three, 107-104, but a 6-0 burst by the FiberXers put them firmly ahead, 110-107, with a minute remaining.

After Marcio Lassiter tied the game at 112 with 6.2 remaining, Stockton sank the game winner over the outstretched arms of CJ Perez.

Following the game, Converge head coach Franco Atienza said that the team held on to two words -- hope and grit.

"There's two words I would like to hold on to. First is hope. We're down 0-2 but we're not yet out. There's still hope, however slim that is... We are really down 14 minutes left in the game but hindi pa rin talo," Atienza told reporters.

"The second word is grit. When you put hope and grit together, you give yourself a chance to win a game. We've played a couple of games na ganito, just grind it out through grit. Belief with the players. And then, at the end of the day, we wanna put it in a toss coin, 50-50 chance," he added.

"We might win it, we might lose it, but give us that chance na either we win it by playing defense, or we win it by shooting the basket. But we wanna get there. We know that's tough and maybe that's the closest we can go sa ganitong elite teams like San Miguel, the toss coin chance at the end of the game, kumbaga one play left in the game, 50-50."

He acknowledged that San Miguel is still a tough team to beat three straight times.

"Still far. Isa lang ito. This is just one of three. When you think about it, it's hard to beat that team three straight e. But, probably, we'll take it, one game muna next Friday," he stressed.

Stockton, for his part, said that the coaching staff told the team to "go down swinging."

"Coach told us that if we're gonna go down this game, we're gonna go down swinging. We have nothing to lose, we were down 0-2, we just kept fighting. I'm speechless," he said.

"We just didn't give up. No matter what was thrown our way, we were down 0-2, we were down 19 or 20, we just kept fighting back. We just rode that."

San Miguel is still up 2-1 in the series.

A win in Game 4 will put them at a collision course against Barangay Ginebra in the semifinals.

Atienza said that they have to be ready for an "angry, sharper" Beermen squad who also came from a match in the East Asia Super League on Wednesday.

They fell against the Suwon KT Sonicboom, 87-81, on Wednesday at the Mall of Asia Arena.

"We have to be ready with the San Miguel team who is galit, who is hungry and willing to get back from this loss. But we will take this. It's a testament of hope and grit. Hopefully we grind up another one, then we'll see."

Game 4 will be on Friday, 7:30 p.m., at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium.