TNT drained a finals record 21 three-pointers on its way to a 116-104 win over Barangay Ginebra on Sunday that tied the PBA Governors Cup Finals at two games apiece at the Smart-Araneta Coliseum.
The Tropang GIGA shot the lights out in Game Four before a stunned crowd of over 16,000 fans at the Big Dome, continuing a trend in this best-of-seven series where the team that hit the most three-pointers came away with the win.
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TNT did just that, nailing 48 percent from the field by making 21 of their 43 shots from beyond the three-point arc to tie the series at 2-2 on the day RR Pogoy was declared out of the PBA Finals with a fractured finger.
TNT import Rondae Hollis-Jefferson came away with 36 points and 10 rebounds while hitting 3 of his 6 shots from the outside for the Tropang GIGA, who will gun for a 3-2 series lead when the finals resume on Wednesday.
Jayson Castro also hit his stride from the outside to lead a bench mob for the Tropang GIGA, while Calvin Oftana regained his shooting stroke in Game Four.
An unlikely hero for the game was Kib Montalbo, who nailed a buzzer-beating three from near midcourt that summed up TNT’s torrid shooting in the contest. He finished with a season-high 16 points - his first to reach double figures this conference.
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TNT broke the previous record set by the Tropang GIGA after they recorded 20 in Game Seven of the 2015 Commissioner’s Cup finals against Rain or Shine.
Castro had 17 points and shot 4-of-6 from behind the arc, while Oftana had 16 points with a 4-of-6 clip as well from threes, bouncing back from his performance in Game Three where he only hit one three-pointer.
Montalbo made four of his eight three-pointers in a rare start after Roger Pogoy was ruled out for the rest of the conference after fracturing his finger in Game Three.
Mikey Williams also had a torrid shooting night where he had 16 points on 4-of-8 from downtown.
“I think what we did was we went back to what we did best,” said TNT coach Jojo Lastimosa. “We knew that if Rondae is there as a screener and we have proper spacing and we have shooters at the corners, we know what we are going to get shots.”
“The problem with our last game was ang sama ng spacing namin. Part of that is kung wala si Rondae is not a facilitator, hindi napupunta ‘yung bola sa mga shooters,” said Lastimosa.
Justin Brownlee had 28 points on 11-of-22 shooting from the field, but had foul trouble woes when he got his fifth foul in the 3:28 mark of the fourth quarter.
The Gin Kings fell behind by as many as 48-25, a deficit that proved to be too big to overcome over the course of the contest.
The scores:
TNT 116 – Hollis-Jefferson 36, Castro 17, M. Williams 16, Oftana 16, Montalbo 16, Khobuntin 8, K. Williams 2, Ganuelas-Rosser 2, Varilla 1, Tungcab 0, Marcelo 0.
Barangay Ginebra 104 – Brownlee 28, Thompson 22, Malonzo 17, Pringle 10, Pessumal 10, Standhardinger 10, Mariano 3, David 2, J. Aguilar 2, Gray 0, Pinto 0, R. Aguilar 0, Onwubere 0.
Quarters: 29-23; 59-41; 95-77; 116-104.
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