DEFENSE STILL THE KEY

The warring sides in the San Mig Coffee – Meralco battle expect things to get uglier.

No easy shots. No easy rebounds. A harder push here and a harder shove there.

The two teams set the tone of their battle in Game One – a physical defensive competition that is likely to continue for the rest of the series.

Victorious with bigger stops that they translated to key transition baskets at the finish Sunday, the Mixers look to pull another one versus the Bolts in Game Two of their PBA Governors’ Cup best-of-five semifinal showdown at the Smart Araneta Coliseum Tuesday.

“Games will be ugly. It’s a series of attrition,” said San Mig Coffee coach Tim Cone.

“No excuses, we lost Sunday night, but we will come back stronger,” said Meralco coach Ryan Gregorio.

As what they’ve been doing all tournament long, the Mixers and the Bolts tried to put the shackles on each other Sunday night.

The Mixers drew first blood in the series as they proved to be more successful with defensive efforts at endgame.

“We battled until we found some open lanes. Our defense created transition baskets in the fourth,” said Cone.

“They did a good job defensively. We practically had to bleed for every basket, and during crunch time, they made their shots and we failed,” said Gregorio.

Cone and Gregorio don’t expect things to change in Game Two.

“We have to shoot well. The paint is just too clogged to operate. We’ve got to get our shooters in sync to give Mario (West) his operating space,” said Gregorio.

“The plan is to tie the series. We cannot dig a deep 0-2 hole. It will be very hard to extricate,” he added.

The Mixers will stick with their ploy, especially with gunner Allein Maliksi declared out for the next six to eight months due to an ACL tear sustained in the SMC – Alaska quarters tussle.

“That brought us down a bit as Allein was really performing well. It was a devastating blow for us,” said Cone. (SB)