MANILA – Barangay Ginebra San Miguel Kings will shoot for a 2-0 edge when it faces Meralco Bolts in Game 2 of the 2019 PBA Governors’ Cup finals tonight at the Quezon Convention Center in Lucena City.
Kings head coach Tim Cone is totally aware that widening their edge against the Bolts in the best-of-seven finals will be easier said than done, as evident in their 91-87 grind out win last Tuesday night.
“Well, I honestly feel this is the way it’s gonna be every game. It is gonna be a grind-out, you know, fight to the end and see who comes out on top in the last couple of minutes,” said Cone.
“So, it’s really a possession by possession game at this point. It’s not the way we necessarily wanna play, but they’re just so good at it that we’re forced to play at that tempo. But hopefully, as the series progresses, we can start finding the kind of rhythm that we wanna play in,” he added.
Cone also said that he has cautioned his players from committing the same mistakes in Game 1 against the well-disciplined Bolts.
“Just, you know… Meralco is so disciplined in the way they play, and it’s really hard to get them out of their tempo. And so you have to play at a match tempo the whole way, and that’s not really a comfortable tempo with us,” said Cone.
For the Bolts’ part, head coach Norman Black said that he is confident that his team can bounce back, as he also hopes that veteran point guard, Baser Amer, will finally have his breakthrough game in the finals.
“We have to try to find a way to get Baser to breakthrough against this team, because he’s struggled even in the last couple of championship series that we played against them, and particularly against LA Tenorio,” said Black.
“He just has to dig deep and break through, have a good game against Ginebra team and against LA. He played pretty well against them in the elimination round but this is a completely different story,” Black added./PN
