It takes a different kind of mental toughness to win a game where you find yourself more than twenty points down in the 1st Quarter, and your shots are not going in. But that is just what the San Miguel Beermen did in their first battle against TNT.
TNT was beating SMB at their own specialty - the three-point shot. SMB usually has three players who can shoot the three consistently - Alex Cabagnot, Marcio Lassiter, and Arwind Santos. But in this particular game, the threes were falling for TNT but not for SMB. Even Kelly Williams, TNT's power forward who is known for his alley-oop finishes has added the three-point shot to his arsenal. Most of TNT's players can shoot from beyond the arc, including forwards Don Trollano and Anthony Semerad.
But SMB has a "no quit" attitude. I would even say that they actually embody their sister team's never say die attitude more. (Ginebra owns that slogan). I've seen a lot of come from behind wins by this particular SMB core since 2015 which is probably one of the reasons why they have a lot of respect from their fans.
Still, SMB has to improve its free-throw and three-point shooting. There might be days like today when despite their dismal performance, they were able to come up with a win. But there are a lot of good teams in this late stage of the Commissioner's Cup, and they might regret not sharpening their skills when the game is close and every point counts. And SMB ought to learn to use some of their players off the bench at critical points in the game. I am hoping they can give MGR and Pessumal more confidence during periods when Ross, Cabagnot or Lassiter are shooting blanks in the field. Good thing Heruela is being used at this time to give Cabagnot and Ross some rest.
Now that SMB has a 1 game lead, they should prepare well for Game 2 and finish the series then if possible. You don't want TNT to be able to bounce back and even this series. TNT simply has too much firepower that it should never be taken lightly.
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