SAN Miguel Beer showed the heart of a champion when the going got tough and denied Barangay Ginebra a third straight shot at TNT, winning the deciding Game 7 of their PBA Philippine Cup semifinals Wednesday night, 100-93.
The Beermen finally found the right combination in June Mar Fajardo, Chris Ross, Jericho Cruz, Rodney Brondial, and Don Trollano as they wiped out an 11-point deficit and secured the series-clinching win, 4-3, before a roaring crowd of 12,279 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
READ Ross' Game 7 heroics help Jericho shake off hangover from Tenorio winner
Now, the Beermen will try to give the TNT Tropang 5G a different look in the finals after the telecommunication franchise twice met the Kings in the championship series of the season’s first two conferences and came out triumphant both times.
TNT is gunning for a historic grand slam, while San Miguel is looking to regain the league’s crown jewel that it lost to Meralco in last year’s finals.
Listed below are the takeaways in the sudden-death game at the Big Dome.
1. TIM CONE IS 0-3 IN LAST THREE GAME 7s FOR GINEBRA - the league’s most accomplished coach in history lost his third straight Game 7 in a year’s span. The Kings lost to Meralco Bolts in their semis death match last season, 78-69, in San Jose, Batangas. Then just a conference ago, they went down to the Tropang 5G in overtime, 87-83, in a memorable Game 7 to win the Commissioner’s Cup championship. And now, this one against the Beermen. Well, as the saying goes, they come in threes.
2. ROSS CERTIFIED GINEBRA KILLER - that the Fil-Am guard delivered for San Miguel against Ginebra where the stakes were high no longer came as a surprise. The 19 total points of Ross is a season-high and his best output over the last four conferences or since scoring 22 points in a 95-82 win during the 2023-24 Commissioner’s Cup against Ginebra. Not really known for his offense, the 40-year-old veteran, according to PBA chief statistician Fidel Mangonon III, made seven of his 11 highest scoring games during the playoffs - and four of them came at the expense of Ginebra.
3. SMB HAS GINEBRA’S NUMBER IN THEIR HEAD-TO-HEAD GAME 7 - it’s just the second Game 7 in the history of the San Miguel-Barangay Ginebra rivalry, but following their win, the Beermen are now 2-0 against the Kings. Their first ever Game 7 meeting came 16 years ago during the Fiesta Conference finals as per Mangonon. San Miguel won the championship, 90-79, behind Best Import Gabe Freeman and Finals MVP Jonas Villanueva.
4. THE BEERMEN SIMPLY THE BETTER TEAM - despite playing catch-up for almost 75 percent of the game and shooting just 46 percent from the field, San Miguel had a better overall game than Barangay Ginebra. The top-seeded team clobbered the Kings off the boards, 51-35, had more assists, 31-28, committed less turnovers, 9-16, had the advantage in steals, 9-4, and a whopping 22-2 edge in second-chance points.
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