Aces face ‘tougher’ Beermen, eye No 2

MANILA, Philippines - Alaska Milk remains wary of a San Miguel Beer that drew out the best from the rest with with its very best injured as it goes for a second win in Game Two tonight of the Smart Bro PBA Philippine Cup best-of-seven finals at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

 The Aces hope to work behind an efficient defense that proved crucial in the first game as Alaska pulled off some stops to seize the initiative and the win.

“The box scores will be deceiving to anyone who didn’t watch the game. We’re just able to string a bunch of stops. We just had some guys stepping up late in the game,” said Alaska coach Alex Compton.

Despite the absence of injured June Mar Fajardo and even with a huge advantage in certain stats departments, the Aces had to work their way from a 12-point deficit at the onset of the fourth quarter to carve out a 100-91 victory in the opener of the title playoff.

The Aces clobbered the Beermen, 48-28, on rebounds; 23-4, on second chance points; and, 75-17, on bench points in the opener. But these numbers didn’t stop the Beermen from setting the pace almost throughout before losing steam in the face of the Aces’ unrelenting defensive press.

“We’re winded down as I played a short rotation of eight players. I was actually thinking of rotating more players, but we saw a chance to win the game, so I stuck with our core group,” said San Miguel coach Leo Austria, who is expected to come up with key adjustments in Game Two set at 7 p.m., also at the Big Dome.

“Crucial was their 20-8 advantage on offensive rebounds. Maybe, if we could have denied them two or three at endgame, we could’ve won the game,” Austria also said.

Fajardo remains doubtful, but Austria is hopeful they can beat Alaska with or without his prized 6-foot-10 behemoth.

“Everybody saw in Game One what we’re capable of doing without June Mar. If we can sustain intensity throughout, we can beat them,” said Austria.

The SMB bench chieftain said they would work hard to avoid falling in a 0-2 hole. “It’s tough for anybody to be in that position,” he said.

The Aces will surely be cautious.

“If I remember it right, we won Game One in the last all-Filipino finals then they bounced back strong in the next game,” said Compton.

The Beermen are eager to do just that again.

For one, Arwind Santos, the second most important player in the SMB team after Fajardo, is determined to make up for his poor performance the last time where he made only four points and five rebounds before fouling out with 3:34 left to play.

He said he deferred to his teammates who were having a hot shooting night.

“My teammates were shooting well and I just opted to play hard on defense,” he said.

Alex Cabagnot and Marcio Lassiter led the Beermen with 20 and 19 points, respectively, while Yancy de Ocampo, filling in for Fajardo, contributed 18 points and seven rebounds.

Ronald Tubid, Gabby Espinas, Chris Ross and Ryan Arana were the other Beermen who played major minutes.

Compton, meanwhile, rotated 12 men and finished strong in a highly-physical contest.