Meralco has reached a milestone after the franchise advanced to its first-ever Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Philippine Cup championship appearance after a hard-fought semifinals series that went the full route.
Bolts head coach Luigi Trillo has been very vocal throughout the all-Filipino conference praising the brilliant mind behind the team’s incredible run: Serbian team consultant Nenad Vucinic.
Meralco eliminated fancied crowd darling Barangay Ginebra San Miguel, 78-69, in Game 7 Friday night at the FPJ Arena in San Jose, Batangas to complete a come-from-behind best-of-seven semis series win after going down, 2-3.
“I just want to give credit where credit is due. I’m sure, the players are always the recognition here but the guy in charge of our basketball program, coach Nenad, (deserves recognition as well),” Trillo said after the Bolts made a breakthrough Philippine Cup finals stint.
Vucinic, a former New Zealand and Gilas Pilipinas coach, joined Meralco in 2022 to help turn the Bolts into a legitimate contender.
Under his guidance, Meralco made it into the playoffs four times including this season-ending tournament where the Bolts will take the challenge of bringing down powerhouse defending champion San Miguel Beer in the best-of-seven finals starting Wednesday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
The road to a historic first title showdown against the Beermen wasn’t easy.
Meralco had to pull itself up from the bottom half of the standings in the tightly contested elimination round to make it to the playoffs. It beat sister-team NLEX in the best-of-three quarterfinals to book its eighth playoffs meeting against the Gin Kings since 2016.
After taking a 2-1 series lead, the Bolts got pushed on the brink of missing the finals cut after five games to a familiar foe they have not beaten in the previous three race-to-4 series.
But Meralco wouldn’t be denied this time after taking the last two matches highlighted by a dramatic fightback from 11 points down in the second quarter of Game 7 for its first best-of-seven series victory in seven tries.
“You know I see (Ginebra) coach Tim (Cone) on the other side, he’s national (team) coach. Coach Nenad also had been a national coach but (now) he is in charge of our team. He’s the captain of our ship,” Trillo said.
“He did a lot of things in this series to bring out the best of the guys. He gave a lot of coaching.”
The Bolts made it to the championship round for the fifth time.
However, Meralco has yet to win a title since joining the league in 2010.
“This is big for our franchise. You know we’ve been through other conferences (finals) import-backed but this is the first time in an all-Filipino,” Trillo said.
Meralco is making its finals return since losing to Ginebra in the 2021 Governors’ Cup in six games.