UNLIKE last Sunday when Mo Tautuaa walked out of the Smart Araneta Coliseum dugout with his shoulders down, towel over his head, totally dejected and nearly lost for words, San Miguel's gentle giant was back to his old ways on Wednesday evening.
Whereas the Fil-Tongan big man was a picture of defeat and frustration three days ago, his face is now painted one of satisfaction, especially after the Beermen scored a 98-92 win over the TNT Tropang 5G to even the score in the PBA Philippine Cup Finals.
READ: Trollano catches fire as San Miguel gets back at TNT in Game Two
Tautuaa, who finished with 16 points in 35 minutes as a starter, even got jokes now.
“You see I try to do it again? I think I’m done trying to dunk now,” Tautuaa said with a laugh, recalling the incident in the 2:13 mark of the fourth period when he fell short on another dunk – this time, the ball missing the rim completely off the bounce.
“I got over that, I’m at a point wherein I’ll just lay it in,” he added.
Based on what happened a few possessions later, it seems like that joke was half-meant.
San Miguel’s last basket came off a Tautuaa lay-up off a fastbreak where he had an opportunity to slam it home but this time, only decided to lay it in gently
Chris Ross, the guy who made that pass in the end even had some good ol’ ribbing for his teammate.
“I was happy he didn’t dunk it,” he said.
The key to San Miguel’s bounce back win, if the two were to be asked, was letting it go quickly.
As frustrating as that loss was, they know that they can’t afford to linger in that loss with six games to go in the series.
“I think that’s the first time anyone has lost a game like that, that points got taken away. I have never seen that ever in my life. It’s cool in that sense I guess, it just sucks that we had to lose that way,” Tautuaa recalled.
“But today it’s all about us playing together. I feel like we played together well today and we weren’t down in a hole early and we just fought and grinded it ‘til the end.”
Ross shared how the moment they met in practice on Monday, it was all about Game 2 in their minds.
“We didn’t really talk about it the next day, we left it at the gym, the next day we just got ready for today. It’s something that you can’t change, you can’t go back and change anything about it,” he said.
“We felt like it was a game that we could’ve won but the calls didn’t go our way.”
READ TNT big man Poy Erram leaves Game Two vs SMB with ankle sprain
And that type of fresh state of mind can be seen with how they performed in Game 2, playing sharper than their counterparts on offense while limiting the Tropang 5G on the other end of the floor.
As a team, the Beermen had 22 assists while forcing TNT to 17 turnovers in a solid display of fluidity on both ends.
“ll we’re doing now is just making sure we go out and play our game, if we play our brand of basketball we do well. It feels good,” Tautuaa continued.
“You see us happy, you see us smiling, when we play that way, things just go our way. We start rolling better, we start shooting better we start playing better that’s the name of the game.”
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