PRIOR to Saturday’s game in San Fernando, Pampanga, Barangay Ginebra's loss to Converge the last time they met was still fresh in Tim Cone's memory.
In their December 21 match-up, which also happened to be a road game in Batangas City, the Gin Kings held a lead as high as 17 points only to lose to the FiberXers, 98-91.
READ Ginebra gets back on track in Pampanga with blowout of Converge
So when the Gin Kings led the FiberXers by as many as 19 in the first half and were up 16 at the half, Cone remained cautious.
“I was threatened,” said Cone. “The last time we played them was out-of-town. We were up 17 at halftime. And then they crunched us in the second half.”
Ginebra eventually won the contest over Converge, 85-66, to go up to 3-2 win-loss, and Cone was glad that the players responded by executing on both ends of the floor even with the lead reaching a high of 21 points.
“We were aware of that. We talked about it at halftime, talked about it at pregame, too," Cone said. "But we were up 16 this time. Obviously, we did a better job of not panicking when they had a couple of runs. We didn’t panic."
Cone also liked the offensive flow as Ginebra shot 44 percent from the field, including 53 percent from two-point range, against a Converge team that also defends well behind Twin Towers Justin Arana and Justine Baltazar.
“We really played a good offensive game. They are a tough defensive team as well because they have so much size inside. We really had to execute to a level that got us looks inside. We just couldn’t come down the floor and get whatever we wanted.
“We really had to work on it. You saw a lot of our shots were late in the shotclock because we are using the clock to do the whole execution. It was really well-played on both sides. We carried that 12-, 13-point lead for most of the game and that’s tough to do and we kinda separated in the last couple of minutes,” said Cone.
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