CHICAGO - The Blackwater Bossing pulled a double bonus on Tuesday night at the Ynares Center by scoring a rare win, their third in 11 tries, and doing it despite playing without their import.
Blackwater minus George King proved to be a case of addition by subtraction as the team flourished without their ball dominant, ball hoarding scoring leader.
READ Blackwater learns King sitting out just 30 minutes before tip-off
Averaging 34.5 points per through nine games, King leads all imports in scoring in this Commissioner's Cup. He is 95-of-224 from the field overall so far, including 2-of-15 from 3 and an ungodly 21-of-68 from 4.
Without the former NBA player chucking shots with impunity while continuing to make passing the ball an afterthought, Blackwater's offense on Tuesday was effortlessly fluid.
And as an end result, everyone ate.
JC GOES BERSERK.
Justin Chua took 21 shots and parlayed it into 22 points with 11 rebounds. Christian David went 6-of-14 for 20 points while old hand JV Casio had 14 points on an efficient 5-of-9 shooting.
Mike Ayonayon and Jewel Ponferada hoisted 15 field goals between them and exploited the opportunity by turning in a combined 21 markers to help Blackwater upset Phoenix, 100-92.
But here's the real kicker.
With King relegated to the bench, the Bossing manufactured 21 assists, which was 4.4 more than their conference average.
Obviously, playing without an import in an import-laden tournament is not an ideal pathway to winning but credit goes to Blackwater coach Jeff Cariaso for making it work.
Despite improving to 3-8, the Bossing are already eliminated from the playoffs because the best they can do is finish at 4-8 and they don't own any tiebreakers against the potential teams that are likely to card the same record at the end of the elimination round.
NOTEWORTHY FEAT.
That being said, it was refreshing to see the Bossing play hard as if a quarterfinals ticket was at stake, a testament to the redemptive culture coach Cariaso is trying to build in a franchise smeared by long losing streaks and bad trades over the years.
Phoenix, on the other hand, incurred a devastating loss, further narrowing its window to enter the postseason.
Playing without a foreign counterpart, Phoenix import Donovan Smith could have weaponized his 6-foot-9 and 244-lb frame as a bulldozer in the paint.
Instead, he settled in as a giant jump shooter, taking 10 attempts from the 3-point and 4-point lines while going to the free throw stripe only four times. He finished 12 of 26 from the field overall but he also had 9 turnovers against only five assists.
To exacerbate his inefficiency, Smith was also a turnstile on defense where everyone he guarded, especially Chua, had a field day scoring.
Don't get me wrong, Smith has been great this conference but he let the Fuel Masters down on a night when their playoffs aspirations were hanging on a thread.
It was a case of Johnny coming lately in so far as the Commissioner's Cup is concerned but here's hoping that Blackwater can produce many more quality wins down the road.
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