CHICAGO - After losing to - of all teams - Terrafirma (95-87) to start their PBA Philippine Cup campaign last April 4, things looked a little bleak for the Phoenix Fuelmasters.
A loss to Converge (92-83) on April 6 immediately turned a hiccup into a near full-blown crisis as the team plunged to 0-2.
But Sunday was resurrection day for Phoenix and the team rose from the ashes of a two-game slide by beating defending champion Meralco, 109-97, at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium.
READ Ricci's career-high 20 points spark Phoenix upset of Meralco
The headline here isn't the win per se but the manner and the ease with which the Fuelmasters did it.
Phoenix built an early 18-point cushion and then poured 109 points on one of the most physically imposing defensive teams in all of the PBA,
And the method to the madness wasn't exactly rocket science, just old-fashioned Basketball 101.
TAKE THE FIGHT TO THEM.
"We needed to attack the basket," Phoenix coach Jamike Jarin told me after the stunning reversal.
Fortunately for the quiet, soft-spoken Jarin, his players followed his instructions to a T, as in Tyler Tio.
Tio led the Phoenix siege with 22 points on 7-of-13 shooting. Ricci Rivero went 4-of-4 from 3 to finish with 20 points while Jason Perkins returned from a two-game bout with the flu and pitched in 19.
Phoenix's assault to the rim was so relentless it caused both Chris Newsome and Cliff Hodge to exit the game with six fouls apiece.
When the smoke cleared, Meralco's vaunted D took a bit of a shellacking as Phoenix led by as many as 26 points, went 9-of-18 from 3 while racking up a combined 69 points on the paint and the perimeter.
LUCK?
Well, it didn't hurt that their shots fell. But this solid victory was largely a function of preparation.
"The coaching staff did a great job preparing us for their defensive schemes," Tio said.
How he and Rivero got so open on several occasions was a concerted effort.
"We ran our sets. The bigs did a good job setting screens and we read their defensive coverages well whether it was a drop, slide, show trap and switch. Then we just used our counters from there," Tio explained.
On defense, Phoenix pulled a Meralco on the Bolts, holding them to just 34.4 percent from the field (32-of-93) and just 28.1 percent from 3-point distance (9-of-32).
It's one win in a long conference. Quite a ways to go still, but Phoenix is soaring. And that's always a good thing.
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