Protected to say that June Mar Fajardo is feeling so much higher. And that has San Miguel Beer having fun with good footing, so to talk, with the Beermen’s PBA Philippine Cup semifinal series against sister team Barangay Ginebra now right down to a sprint.
A 107-82 victory by the Beermen over the Gin Kings on Wednesday night at Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay where the 6-foot-11 Fajardo played 31 minutes and finished with 12 points and 19 rebounds actually gives San Miguel momentum heading into Game 5 on Friday where they break a 2-2 tie of their best-of-seven series.
“Everyone that coach (Leo Austria) tapped to play played well,” Fajardo, who hobbled within the previous two games due to a calf injury sustained in Game 1, said in Filipino. “That was big for us.”
San Miguel wheeled away within the third quarter after its defense held Ginebra to a paltry 12 points, and that would spill over to the following game, especially with Fajardo getting one other full day’s rest.
CJ Perez led the Beermen with 19 points, six of them coming within the telling third quarter where San Miguel turned a one-point halftime deficit right into a 17-point lead entering the ultimate frame.
“Everyone knows that it might be hard for us to come back back from a 1-3 deficit (by losing Game 4),” Fajardo, who began for the primary time within the last three games, added. “So coaching staff made sure that we got here out with intensity while executing our game plan.
“Fortunately, we were in a position to do each,” Fajardo concluded.
The winner of this series will advance to face the survivor of the TNT-Rain or Shine semifinals, which the Tropang 5G lead, 2-1, going into their Game 4 at press time.
Igniting the breakaway
San Miguel also found its outside shot again, hitting 14 triples in comparison with the three they made in Game 3.
Juami Tiongson, seeing motion in his first semifinal series after an extended history with doldrum teams, and Rodney Brondial actually hit triples to spotlight the San Miguel breakaway within the third.
“It was very obvious that the energy of the team was very high,” Austria, calling the shots in a full tournament for the primary time since his comeback throughout the middle of the Commissioner’s Cup last December, said. “A whole lot of our perimeter shots went in unlike before.
“[And] defense was also one other thing we focused on,” Austria added as his game plan succeeded in disrupting the Ginebra flow, with the Kings held to 18 assists, “which is below their average, and it proved our defense worked.”
There have been six players in twin digits for Austria, while Troy Rosario led the Kings with 14 points and Jamie Malonzo accounted for 12.