Guiao braces for E-Painters crucial showdown vs Aces

MANILA, Philippines - Rain or Shine coach Yeng Guiao took their shattering loss to TNT Sunday in stride and said their game against Alaska Milk Friday is bigger and more crucial in their bid for an outright semifinal berth in the Smart Bro PBA Philippine Cup.

“We’ve been playing a real good conference. We’re still right there at the top. If we beat Alaska, we’ll figure in the semis race prominently,” said Guiao, hardly shaken by their 85-95 loss to the Texters.

“We’ll prepare hard for Alaska. That’s our biggest game right now in the conference,” Guiao added.

The loss to TNT relegated ROS (6-2) to third behind joint pacesetters Alaska Milk (7-1) and San Miguel Beer (7-1).

But a win by the Elasto Painters Friday will force a tie between ROS and Alaska at 7-2 with the former enjoying a superior quotient.

Rain or Shine has also beat San Miguel, meaning the E-Painters would also have a superior quotient in case of a logjam with the Beermen.

Tournament format calls for the Top Two after the single round robin elims to automatically make the semis. The next eight figure in a tough two-phase quarterfinal round.

A game behind the frontrunners, Guiao insists they’re very much in the thick of the fight, hopeful of sweeping their last three games against Alaska, Meralco and NLEX.

“We have a good pattern. We win three, we lose one; we win three, we lose one. So we’re hoping we win another three. You do that and you have a good chance to make the semis,” he said, smiling.

He feels though that they have to make a good preparation to hurdle Alaska, especially as they’re coming from a game where they turned the ball over 21 times.      

“My concern is if we turned the ball over 21 times and you next play Alaska, the no. 1 team in forcing turnovers, the next few days we have to find a way to avoid turning the ball over against pressure defense that Alaska applies,” said Guiao.

“We’ll try to avoid getting to that trap again of turning the ball over too many times. Alaska is the best in doing that,” Guiao added.

The Aces all but clinch an outright semis berth if they beat the E-Painters.

The San Miguel Beermen have a chance to do that against the NLEX Road Warriors at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Cuneta Astrodome.

Globalport presses its bid for a Top Six aspiration while Meralco fights for survival as they mix it up in the 4:15 p.m. curtain-raiser.

Buried deep behind by the Texters right in the first half Sunday, the E-Painters played on partly in preparation for their next games.

“We just took the game trying to absorb all the lessons we can learn from it. In the second half, we kept on doing what we’re trying to do. If we want to beat them in the future, let’s learn in this game,” said Guiao.

“They (the Texters) were very aggressive defending our pick-and-rolls. I kept telling the guys during the game, it’s different playing a team with quick bigs compared to bigs that are slow. We can’t break them right away with a first pick-and-roll. You have to wait two or three passes to break them down. We’re not able to exercise that,” Guiao added.