By REYNALD MAGALLON
Bay Area and Ginebra look to bury their respective rivals to a 2-0 hole in Game 2 of their best-of-five semifinals series in the 2022 PBA Commissioner’s Cup at the PhilSports Arena on Friday, Dec. 16.
Both the Kings and the Dragons proved to be the steadier teams down the stretch in the nerve-wracking start to their semis showdowns and they are aiming to replicate the feat and close in on the Finals seats in the pivotal second game of the series.
Ginebra battles Magnolia in the opening game at 3 p.m. while Bay Area faces San Miguel in the main event at 5:45 p.m.
The Kings overcame the Hotshots who were forced to play all-Filipino for the most part of the second half in their first encounter, 87-84, after the ejection of import Nick Rakocevic.
Even without its import, however, Magnolia still put up a gallant stand and threatened to take the victory in the end game, if not for the big basket of Christian Standhardinger that allowed the Kings to have some breathing room.
Very much familiar with Magnolia, Ginebra head coach Tim Cone is bracing for a fight back from the Hotshots as he expects Rakocevic to make up for lost time in the second game. The challenge for the Kings, according to Cone, is to keep him away from the boards while also having Justin Brownlee bounce back from a dismal showing in Game 1.
In the second game, Bay Area head coach Brian Goorjian is looking to address his team’s slow start that allowed SMB to gain momentum and build a lead that went to as many as 16 points in Game 1.
While he was proud at the poise and resilience his team displayed in the series opener, Goorjian doesn’t want to play with fire and be in that very same position in Game 2 especially after getting a taste of SMB’s firepower anchored on June Mar Fajardo and Terrence Romeo.
Andrew Nicholson will continue to man the paint for Bay Area but it will be on guys like Glen Yang, Zhu Songwei, and Kobey Lam to put a hand in the face of the SMB snipers in Romeo, CJ Perez and Marcio Lassiter who all caught fire from the distance in the first game.
SMB acting head coach Jorge Gallent, for his part, likened what he saw in the first game although a fourth quarter collapse – a problem that SMB has faced even in their past few games – haunted the Beermen once again.
Tasked to address their final frame issues is import Devon Scott who had a lackluster start to the series with only nine points although contributing on other facets of the game with his eight rebounds and eight assists.
