DEFENDING champion San Miguel Beer gave Bay Area fits early on but the Dragons had the last laugh yesterday.
Bay Area battled back from a 16-point third quarter deficit and stunned SMB, carving out a nail-biting 103-102 squeaker in Game 1 of their best-of-5 semifinals duel in the PBA Commissioner’s Cup at the PhilSports Arena in Pasig.
Kobey Lam’s gutsy driving layup gave the Dragons a 102-103 cushion, only 7.1 ticks that stood as the final count after Beermen import Devon Scott missed on a jumper at the buzzer.
Reinforcement Andrew Nicholson showed the way for Bay Area with a double-double of 30 points and 15 rebounds, to go with three assists, while Zhu Songwei chipped in 19 markers, a board, and seven dimes.
Hayden Blankley also had 15 and nine, while Ju Mingxin and Lam combined for 25 points for the Dragons, who did an encore to a 126-96 thumping of Rain or Shine in the quarterfinals six days ago and gained a 1-0 edge in the race-to-3 series.
SMB came off a 120-107 drubbing of Converge also in the quarterfinals last Saturday.
Bay Area coach Brian Goorjian, still grieving over the death of his father over the weekend, gushed at resolve displayed by his charges.
“I think the other team thinks they could push us around and we’re young and that Filipino toughness — that was the test early, they’re gonna come at you and be physical. They’re gonna try to intimidate,” Goorjian said. “But we’ve grown and I’m most proud that they got on top of this, but we never quit, they stayed in the game, and we never let it go.
“As the game went on, you’ve got 22, 23-year-old legs still out on that floor and play to our advantage,” he added.
The Beermen took a 59-51 lead at the halfway mark and padded it to as much as 83-67 on a Jericho Cruz three-pointer with 4:02 to go in the third canto.
The foreign guest team trimmed SMB’s buffer to 78-89 heading into the payoff period.
A June Mar Fajardo basket pushed the Beermen ahead 102-99 in the final 50 seconds before a Blankley bucket made it 101-102 with 32 seconds left.
CJ Perez led the fight for SMB with 24 points and seven caroms, while Terrence Romeo added 21 markers.
Marcio Lassiter, Fajardo, and Cruz also contributed 16, 11, and 11 points, respectively for the Beermen.
