Aces stay in hunt for outright slot

Alaska bucked the absence of top gun Willie Miller and beat Coca-Cola in a defensive duel, squeezing out a 77-73 win to stay in contention for an outright semifinals seat in the Smart PBA Fiesta Conference at the Araneta Coliseum last night.

The Aces limited the Tigers to their lowest output in the tourney as coach Tim Cone and his chargers grabbed third place in the standings on their ninth win against seven losses.

“Without Willie, we had to make it a defensive battle. We came out with the desire to make it a defensive game. We defended their posts extremely well and our guards gave their ball handlers a real hard time operate their plays,” said Cone.

“Everybody stepped up and it’s nice to win that way. It was a huge game for us. It can be considered our best game in the conference so far coming off a loss and playing Coca-Cola without the league MVP (Miller),” Cone said.

The Tigers, held 19 points below their average output, slid to joint fourth with the Magnolia Beverage Masters at 9-8 with their third straight loss.

Randy Holcomb came through with a near triple-double game with 20 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists and drew significant support from Joachim Thoss, Jeffrey Cariaso, Tony dela Cruz and Larry Fonacier.

Thoss put in 12 points and the same number of rebounds. Dela Cruz had his own double-double game with 11 points and 10 rebounds with Cariaso adding 12 points and Fonacier two triples and total of 10 markers.