Beeracle 2.0?
San Miguel Beer stands at the doorstep of another miraculous comeback, this time against sister squad Barangay Ginebra.
The Gin Kings and coach Tim Cone will try to slam the door shut on that attempt on Tuesday, when the two teams battle in the deciding Game 5 of their PBA Governors’Cup quarterfinals at Ynares Center in Antipolo City.
The winner of the 7:30 p.m. encounter will advance to a semifinal showdown against TNT, a rival of both teams.
NLEX and Converge will clash in the other half of the semifinals.
10 years ago
San Miguel will attempt to become just the fourth team in PBA history to overcome a 0-2 deficit to win a best-of-five series, and the Beermen have already done something even more difficult.
Ten years ago, San Miguel rallied from a 0-3 deficit to beat Alaska and win the 2015-16 Philippine Cup, a feat that still feels unimaginable.
But coach Leo Austria, who authored that comeback along with current standouts June Mar Fajardo, Marcio Lassiter and Game 4 hero Chris Ross, would rather not make this a history-making project.
“We will not exaggerate the situation,” Austria said. “We just have to play our game because we want to focus on what we’re doing.”
Crispa was the first to pull off the comeback during the 1976 All-Philippine Championship, leaning on the hot hands of Atoy Co to beat archrival Toyota and complete the league’s first Grand Slam.
The Redmanizers were coached by Baby Dalupan, who would replicate the feat back in the 1990 Third Conference when the youthful Purefoods Hotdogs beat the Alaska Air Force three in a row for the franchise’s first title.
The third time that deficit was overhauled was in the 2009-10 Philippine Cup, when Ginebra beat Talk N’ Text despite going down 0-2 in the Philippine Cup quarterfinals, a series marred by the Tropang Texters’ walkout in Game 4.
1990 collapse
Cone was a victim of Alaska’s 1990 collapse, and this time, he will try to sustain the Gin Kings’ amazing turnaround from the brink of elimination during the group stage to taking the first two games against the Beermen.
“We knew they were going to come back,” Cone said. “And they came back a little harder than we thought they would. But the bottom line is, it’s tied up. It’s 2-2.”
San Miguel took Game 4, 108-102, behind Ross and a collective defensive effort that limited the production of import Jordan Murphy and RJ Abarrientos, who were thorns to the Beermen’s side in the first two games.
On the flip side, Beermen import George King fired 35 points in a performance that could signal an end to his scoring struggles at the start of this series.
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