Kings battle Warriors with Japeth Aguilar, Art dela Cruz in tow

Devance out with stress fracture

MANILA, Philippines — After two anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) surgeries, Art dela Cruz will finally be back in the PBA klieg lights, reactivated by Barangay Ginebra for its last five games in the PBA Governors Cup elims starting against NLEX tonight at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

Japeth Aguilar may also be back in action but the Kings will still be badly undermanned with Joe Devance now with Greg Slaughter, Sol Mercado and Jervy Cruz in sickbay.

Devance fought through pain while Aguilar rested his sprained ankle. But the Fil-Am forward is now also taking a rest to recover from a stress fracture on his foot.

“It saddens me that I’ll be out for at least another month due to stress fracture. I had pain in my foot since last conference. I didn’t realize it was a stress fracture. Doctor told me to stop or else it will get worse,” Devance said.

But the Kings are determined to get going as they’ve been doing all tournament long despite all their health woes.

They look to regain the solo lead at 6-1 (win-loss) versus an NLEX side that has also been playing well and is coming into the 7 p.m. setto with a 4-2 mark.

Blackwater (4-1) tries to rebound from a lone defeat thus far while Meralco (1-3) seeks to start a needed rally in their own crucial matchup at 4:30 p.m.

“NLEX has been very good and efficient offensively, and we’ll have to figure a way to defend them,” said Ginebra coach Tim Cone.

“At a time when Ginebra seems most vulnerable because of injuries, they keep playing their best basketball. Their guys have been stepping up big time,” said NLEX coach Yeng Guiao.

“We know they defend the lane better than any team. We have to make our shots like we did against Blackwater in order to open up some space for our bigs,” Guiao added.

The NLEX bench chieftain can see that the Kings are not lacking the firepower in the absence of Aguilar, Slaughter and Mercado.

“(Justin) Brownlee does not have a weakness in his game so all we can do is to work hard and pray. LA (Tenorio) and Scottie (Thompson) will be added headaches for us,” Guiao said.

But the Road Warriors themselves have been pretty solid with original import Oluseyi Ashaolu and now with  import sub Aaron Fuller.

They went 3-2 minus Guiao, and fashioned out a 124-106 rout of the previously unbeaten Blackwater side upon the return of their coach on Sept. 26.