The San Miguel Beermen thought that Game 1 was in the bag. They had a 20-point lead after two quarters of play. Paul Lee of Magnolia was not producing his usual offensive output. And yet, Gio Jalalon and Ian Sanggalang kept on playing. And Coach Chito Victolero brings in the game changer - Rob Herndon, who shoots a couple of long distance bombs to help the Magnolia Hotshots erase the huge lead.
Magnolia did an excellent job rotating their men. They actually have more injured key players than SMB, and yet they have been able to pull off an upset. Props to Coach Chito Victolero. He is using the 3-big men defense used by Tim Cone against Jun Mar. This win just shows that the Hotshots are probably hungrier than the Beermen.
But this is just Game 1. I remember the time that the Utah Jazz beat the Chicago Bulls in Game 1 of their best of seven finals series. The Bulls bounced back after that and eventually wins the series in their sixth match. SMB has Championship experience. And they have actually been able to come back down 0-3. That is a feat that probably won't be repeated by this team, but they can always draw inspiration from that. And they had the lead in this game. If Coach Leo Austria probably utilized the bench players more, then the core players would have had more energy in the 4th quarter, the quarter that counts.
Utilize players like Lanete, Vigil, Herjuela, De Ocampo, and Agovida. Like Herndon, Coach Austria might just get lucky and get a huge performance boost from any of them. And with Ross at less than a hundred percent, Pessumal, Espinas and Rosser have to step-up. Any help that the core players can get would be welcome.
At this point, all SMB can do is learn from this loss, and move on to the next game. It should remind them not to be over confident against this Magnolia squad. It is a good thing this was not a knock out game but a seven game series. And it looks like it will be an exciting series ahead - a good thing for all the fans.
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