Barangay Ginebra San Miguel are now 8-2 in 10 playoff series against the Meralco Bolts since 2016. This after the barangay outlasted their rivals, 94-87, in a hard-fought Game 3 at the Ynares Center on Sunday.
While the rivalry has been quite one-sided in favor of the crowd darlings, two men who have been in every series—Tim Cone and Justin Brownlee—know all too well that beating Meralco isn’t that easy as Ginebra is making it out to be.
“I just want to give Meralco a lot of credit. They’re a really tough team,” Brownlee said in the aftermath of Ginebra’s big victory. “Whenever you’re going up against a team like that, you always want to play your best because if you’re not at your best they’re probably going to beat you.”
And, at least in the first half of Game 3, it looked like the Bolts were headed for the upset—until Brownlee intervened as only he could.
Cone Admits Quarters Showdown with Meralco Worried Him
Cone, for his part, admitted to being “worried” about playing Meralco in a best-of-three, likely because he knows the caliber of the Bolts.
“We were really worried going into this series playing a tremendous team like Meralco in a short series,” Cone told reporters after Game 3. “That’s what makes the quarters so difficult. There’s so much more pressure for me in the quarters than there is in the semis or in the finals because the series is short and you’re always playing a team that’s desperate.”
Indeed, Meralco came out like the more desperate team, even going on a 12-0 run to start the second quarter to build a double-digit cushion—one that Brownlee almost singlehandedly erased just before intermission.
“I just thought that they came out with just such great physicalit,y and that’s something we had to really try to overcome,” Cone added. “They came out with that great physicality all the way through all three games, and they had some really great game plans coming in. It’s just a really well-coached side…”
In the end, though, Ginebra did just enough to overcome a tough, well-coached Meralco team. Now, they’ll have to worry about the NorthPort Batang Pier.
