MERALCO drew first blood versus San Miguel Beer in the PBA Philippine Cup Finals with a solid collective effort leading to a gutsy 93-86 triumph at the Smart Araneta Coliseum Wednesday night.
The Bolts big men endured a tough battle versus June Mar Fajardo at the paint and the guards took the scoring cudgels with their outside shooting and conversions on fastbreaks as Meralco repeated their 95-92 win over San Miguel Beer in their elims tiff.
For the second time in the tourney, the Bolts snapped the Beermen's hot streak and thus gained the 1-0 head start in the best-of-seven championship series.
The Beermen were gunning for an 11-game sweep in the elims when they were first beaten by the Bolts. Then, San Miguel was coming from a five-game romp from the quarterfinals when it again went down in defeat to Meralco.
Bolts coach Luigi Trillo said their superb job in the second half did the trick in their repeat win.
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"They beat us in a lot of categories in the first half, then we came out in the seconds half and were able to do the game plan that we wanted to do," said Trillo.
"We did a better job in the second half, and overall, it's a team effort in which everyone was chipping in," Trillo also said, mentioning four guys alternating at defending Fajardo and numerous guys sharing the load on the offensive end.
Chris Newsome and Chris Banchero led the Meralco scoring parade with 18 points apiece, Bong Quinto and Allein Maliksi chipped in 15 each while Cliff Hodge was also a big help with his 15 rebounds going with seven markers.
Raymond Almazan was the lead guy taking on Fajardo, and he had his own numbers with eight points and seven rebounds. Also tasked to defend JMF were Brandon Bates, Kyle Pascual and Norbert Torres.
The Bolts did help one another as they wiped out a seven-point halftime deficit.
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Newsome came through with a three-point play then Quinto fired back-to-back treys to start the second half. And it also kicked off their tough, brave stand in the final half leading to their Game One stunner.
Trillo stressed though that it's just one game.
Despite facing different defensive looks, Fajardo finished with a game-high 23 points on top of 10 rebounds while CJ Perez and Marcio Lassiter added 20 and 16, respectively.
Terrence Romeo sat out the whole game. (SB)
