AS much as it was a disappointing loss for Barangay Ginebra on Sunday, head coach Tim Cone kind of expected that the grueling schedule will somehow catch up with the team.
Cone on Magnolia vs Ginebra
He is taking the positives, though, as Cone also didn’t expect that Ginebra would have a chance at being unbeaten with their difficult schedule of four games in seven days.
“It was a perfect storm of negative for us tonight,” said Cone, quoting what the team’s strength and conditioning coach Kirk Collier said at the dugout following the 118-88 defeat against Magnolia in the PBA Governors’ Cup.
“I hate to admit this but we were really a tired team tonight. You can see it in the body language, our lack of activity. We just weren’t going up and down the floor. We are not moving the ball. Ball was moving slowly tonight. We were late in all of our rotations. It was a perfect storm. We were tired and we played a team that was desperate and has new life with an import. Just came out and they out-physicaled us and out-energized us.”
“I turned into really an embarrassing night. You don’t want that in a Manila Clasico night when the crowd’s watching. The schedule just caught up with us,” said Cone.
Ginebra hadn't experienced this kind of beating since four years ago when the Gin Kings dropped a 120-94 decision to NorthPort in Game One of the 2019 Governors' Cup semifinals on December 14, according to PBA statistics chief Fidel Mangonon.
Cone though offered no excuses, and instead, saw the silver lining with the result of their first four games to open their title retention bid – a predicament that even he didn’t expected after coming off a huge high of winning the Commissioner’s Cup finals against Bay Area.
“I was waiting for this to happen in one of the games. Before the stretch started, I felt that if we can get 3-1 or 2-2, I’d be happy. But once we got 3-0, we were greedy, we wanted to get to 4-0. Not getting 4-0 with a chance to get 4-0, now, it’s disappointment.”
“But overall, for the whole week, I’m proud of our guys, coming off the championship. But tonight was truly our first hangover night.
After trailing, 59-37, at the half, the Gin Kings were able to trim the gap to as low as 15. But at that point, Ginebra was running on fumes.
“We just didn’t have it. I tried hard. We tried hard to get on them at halftime. They came out with a little bit of fire but we just couldn’t sustain it. We don’t want to use it as an excuse. We don’t want to use the schedules or things like that as an excuse. But we do know the value of moving on and moving forward. So we will move forward,” said Cone.
Ginebra will take a much-needed rest before going back to action on Friday where they face San Miguel.
“We have another really tough opponent in San Miguel. We didn’t expect to go undefeated this conference. We didn’t expect to go undefeated in a stretch of four games,” said Cone.
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