JAPETH Aguilar finally returned to the floor after a lengthy recovery from an injury, rejoining Ginebra on Friday in Game Three of the PBA Governors’ Cup finals.
Aguilar saw action for nearly five minutes and tallied two points, nailing his only shot of the contest during the second quarter of Barangay Ginebra’s 117-103 win over TNT. Inserted at the 8:59-mark of the second quarter, Aguilar also grabbed one rebound in his first game since he suffered an MCL injury during his second game of the conference.
See Fans heckling Poy Erram heard on Game Three video
He played much longer than planned, but Barangay Ginebra's versatile big man said he was feeling fine.
“Okay naman ‘yung feeling ko. Okay na rin para sa akin. Actually, kinausap ako ni coach, napatagal ‘yung balik sa akin. Balak niya two minutes. Pero okay naman. Wala namang problema,” said Aguilar.
Barangay Ginebra coach Tim Cone said the plan was just to give Aguilar a feel for the game after two months.
“The goal was to go out and give Japeth a feel. Give him a couple of minutes, try to find a time to do that. There was kind of a mess-up in the scorers’ table. Japeth was supposed to go in for Christian and he ended up going in for Justin. And that kind of screwed us up for a little bit. We need to call a timeout to bring Justin back in the game.”
Cone said he doesn’t see Aguilar regaining his usual minutes pre-injury during this finals series.
“Japeth hit that jumper at the baseline and you can tell he is not real explosive at the moment. But he is still feeling into it. Maybe in the next game, we can extend the minutes a little more. Whether he is going to go back to normal minutes in this series, I’m not sure. I don’t think so. We will continue to give him minutes hopefully and see how he does,” said Cone.
Aguilar said he was unsatisfied with his play in Game Three as it was during his court time where TNT got close in the game after building a 29-19 lead at the end of the first quarter.
“Mas masaya ako actually na nakuha namin ‘yung panalo na ‘to. Nung pinasok ako, nahabol eh. Medyo dismayado ako. Medyo naninibago lang ako sa laro kasi finals na ‘to. Margin of mistake, sobrang liit.”
“Kahit ‘yung kaninang hindi ko pag-show, medyo nag-sag ako, talagang pinagbayaran ko talaga. Masaya ako na nakuha namin ito. At least ‘yung pagbalik ko, nakakuha ng win,” said Aguilar.
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