Crippled badly by injuries, Meralco leaned heavily on defense to top Shopinas.com, 79-72, in the 2011-12 PBA Philippine Cup at the Smart Araneta Coliseum tonight.
The Bolts dragged the Clickers in a tough defensive battle, making the bigger stops and putting in enough points to break into the win-column after losing their season debut versus the Talk n Text Tropang Texters Friday.
“We knew it’s going to be an ugly game because we intended to make it hard for them to score in the hope of putting us in a position to win,” said Meralco coach Ryan Gregorio.
“I was really hoping that this conference would be a great trial conference for us if Sol Mercado and Macmac Cardona can play together. But what happened was that they got injured together. We have to put emphasis on defense without our scorers,” Gregorio added.
Mercado and Cardona are out nursing a knee injury and a sprained ankle, respectively. Worse, the team is also missing the services of two other key players in Chris Ross and Reynel Hugnatan.
“We’re without four of our best players but it’s not a reason to cry. We’ll find ways to win,” said Gregorio.
Find ways to win Meralco did versus Shopinas through an efficient defense that limited the Clickers to a 32.6-percent shooting and forced them to commit two crucial errors inside the final minute.
Asi Taulava scored on a post-up play and Mark Macapagal buried two free throws in pouncing on the Shopinas key turnovers to make it 79-72 with 14.3 seconds left to play.
Taulava finished with 10 rebounds and seven points while Gabby Espinas, Macapagal, Mark Isip and Mark Yee wound up with at least 10 points each as Meralco dealt Shopinas a second loss in as many games.
Paolo Hubalde scored a career-high 21 points to pace the Clickers.
Down by 12 at 69-57, the Clickers employed a full-court pressing defense to rally to within three, 72-75, with 1:06 left to play.
Earlier, Meralco was headed to the halftime break with a good cushion only to commit grievous errors allowing Shopinas to score six points in the last 13 seconds.
The Clickers had two steals parlayed into layups in that brief period, carrying Shopinas to within one, 31-32, at the half.
The Bolts shot better (38.9 percent) than the Clickers (27.1 percent) but negated the advantage with 15 turnovers in the first 24 minutes of play.
The scores:
MERALCO 79 – Espinas 16, Macapagal 14, Isip 11, Yee 10, Lanete 8, Taulava 7, Borboran 6, Timberlake 5, Omolon 2, Ballesteros 0.
SHOPINAS.COM 72 – Hubalde 21, Menor 9, Sena 7, Duncil 7, Ritualo 7, Mirza 6, Se 6, Hermida 4, Sison 2, Jazul 2, Canlas 1, Espiritu 0.
Quarterscores: 9-11, 32-31, 58-52, 79-72