CYRUS Baguio and NLEX breeze past Meralco. ROMAN PROSPERO

NLEX made it two wins in a row behind the stellar shooting of JR Quinahan after outlasting Meralco, 105-99, in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Governors’ Cup last night at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

Quinahan tallied a team-high 19 points, spiked by five three-pointers as the Road Warriors claimed the solo lead with a 2-0 win-loss mark.

Import Olu Ashaolu added 17 points and 13 rebounds, Kiefer Ravena and Kenneth Ighalo each had 15 points while Jericho Cruz contributed 10 markers for NLEX.

“We’re playing balance basketball, that to me is a great news. We’re not just relying on our import. Our locals are contributing on the offensive end as well as on the defensive end. I thought in the second half we had the game under control for the most part, mainly because of our defense,” Road Warriors head coach Yeng Guiao said.

“Kiefer is a big difference at the same time Jericho, Larry (Fonacier), Iggy (Kenneth Ighalo), Bong Galanza, Mike Miranda and the rest of the guys are making their contributions not necessarily on offense but overall. These were the pieces that we didn’t have,” he added.

Allen Durham led all scorers with 32 points and hauled down 19 rebounds while Raymond Almazan also contributed a double-double game for the Bolts with 17 points and 17 boards.

Baser Amer was the only other Meralco local player in double figures in scoring with 15 as the wards of head coach Norman Black dropped to 1-1 in the team standings.

“Their import Allen Durham did most of the scoring for them, our objective was: If he is going to score we should limit (Chris) Newsome, Baser, and the rest of the other guys. Fortunately, we did that,” Guiao said.

The game was tight in the first half with NLEX holding a 55-46 advantage entering the break.

Holding a 59-55 lead, Road Warriors import Olu Ashaolu initiated a 14-0 run to pad their lead to 18, 73-55, 5:45 left in the third period.

NLEX was still enjoying a huge 96-78 advantage when Meralco cut the lead to single digit, 96-100, behind the efforts of Amer and Almazan with 1:14 remaining.

But Cruz scored on a lay-up off a pass from Ravena to end the NLEX drought, 102-96, 53 ticks left and the Road Warriors held on for their second straight win.

Guiao lauded the effort of the team particularly in the closing seconds where they denied the Bolts of a comeback.

“The biggest difference is that now we had some pieces. The last time, we didn’t have the pieces we needed,” Guiao said.

“We lost a lot of games in the endgame because we really did not have solid point guard we did not able to finish strong in the end game. We had a lot of close games but we couldn’t finish strong.”