Meralco shocks San Miguel Beer

Meralco drew first blood after scoring a 93-86 shocker over fancied defending champion San Miguel Beer in Game 1 of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Philippine Cup best-of-seven finals series Wednesday night at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.

True to their tag as the best defensive team in the season-ending conference, the Bolts held the Beermen below their conference-best scoring average with a clampdown in the second half after trailing at halftime.  

Meralco’s collective effort on defense paired with a huge run that shattered a 75-75 deadlock early in the fourth period anchored its second win over San Miguel Beer in the all-Filipino conference.

Game 2 is on Friday at the same venue.

"We just have a game plan that we wanted to do in the first half but we weren't doing the gameplan that well. If you've noticed, they had a lot of points off turnovers, fastbreak points. They were beating us in a lot of categories: rebounds and other things," Bolts coach Luigi Trillo said.

"I think we just came out in the second half where we were able to do what we wanted to do. We want to take away certain things from them: their points for the game where we really put an exclamation point that we need to do that in order for us to have a chance in the series."

"And in the second half we did better."

Chris Banchero had 18 points on 8-of-16 shooting and added seven rebounds and five assists to lead the Bolts, who went behind 44-51 after the first 24 minutes of action.

Chris Newsome scored 11 of his 18 points in the third quarter while Allein Maliksi and Bong Quinto added 15 markers each as Meralco won its first game in the franchise's first Philippine Cup finals appearance since joining the league in 2010.

The Bolts outscored the Beermen, 23-14, in the fourth period where they made a crucial 14-6 run to turn a tied ballgame into an 89-81 count in favor of Meralco.

Banchero gave the Bolts their biggest lead, 93-83, off a tip-in with 1:35 left.

San Miguel guard Terrence Romeo sat out the match because of a calf injury.

Box scores:

MERALCO (93) --- Newsome 18, Banchero 18, Quinto 15, Maliksi 15, Caram 9, Almazan 8, Hodge 7, Bates 2, Pascual 1, Torres 0, Pasaol 0, Jose 0, Dario 0

SAN MIGUEL (86) --- Fajardo 23, Perez 20, Lassiter 16, Trollano 9, Tautuaa 5, Cruz 5, Teng 4, Brondial 4, Ross 0, Enciso 0

Quarters: 19-20, 44-51, 70-72, 93-86