Barangay Ginebra San Miguel are heading into the PBA Philippine Cup semis after a dramatic come-from-behind victory over the Converge FiberXers on Sunday night at the Smart Araneta Coliseum. The win, according to Ginebra coach Tim Cone, “felt miraculous”—and maybe it was. But maybe it was also because Team NSD showed that fabled never-say-die spirit.
“I just kept saying right after the game that, you know, we got lucky, we got lucky, we got lucky. I just couldn’t stop repeating that because, you know, [we] lose Scottie [Thompson] at the foul out, [we] lose Jap [Japeth Aguilar] at the foul out, [we] recover from that four-point shot that [Juan Gomez] de Liaño hit and still make that big shot at the end,” Cone said after the game. “It just felt, I don’t know, it felt miraculous to me.”
It was all sorts of miraculous, indeed, with Ginebra twice rising from the grave to steal the win from Converge—once when they were down three, 86-83, in regulation, and a second time when they fell behind by six, 95-89, after JGDL hit a booming four-pointer in RJ Abarrientos’s noggin.
Fighting Back Like the Ginebra of Old
Then again, Cone might be selling his team short if he believes it was purely luck that enabled the crowd darlings to pull off such a stunning victory. As the saying goes, fortune favors the bold, and Ginebra was bold enough to battle until the very end.
Jeremiah Gray, inserted cold off the bench in the final eight seconds of regulation, caught the Converge defense napping, sprinting toward the Ginebra frontcourt and getting himself in position to shoot a potential game-tying triple. He got fouled taking that trey, then made three pressure-packed freebies to send the game to extra time.
Then, in OT, Ginebra again looked dead in the water after the FiberXers took that 95-89 cushion with time down to under three minutes. But Cone’s boys kept fighting and got one final shot at glory just down by two, 98-96. The rest is history. That fightback, it turns out, isn’t lost on the PBA’s all-time winningest coach.
“But when it comes down to it, our guys fought and our guys battled,” he eventually said. “We didn’t play a great game tonight. We didn’t have everything going tonight, but we just kept battling and battling and finding a way to win.”
Ginebra definitely battled, all right. It’s probably why Lady Luck smiled at them in the end.
