If you happened to miss out on the 2021 PBA Philippine Cup’s Wednesday double-header slate, here’s a quick rundown to keep you updated.
Ginebra’s Bacolor stint comes to an end
The TNT Tropang Giga advanced to the semifinals by handily defeating Barangay Ginebra, 84-71.
Main Takeaways:
- Even though they had full control of the game from the second quarter up to the final buzzer, it still feels as though the best is yet to come for this mighty TNT squad. Best Player of the Conference frontrunner Mikey Williams logged heavy minutes (36:23), but he was fully content in just facilitating the offense and deferring to his teammates. On top of that, Jayson Castro had another quiet scoring night off the bench, making just two of his seven field goal attempts and finishing with only seven points. At this point, we already know that defense is the strongest collective asset of TNT, but they would reach peak status when both Williams and Castro are really trying out there.
- Ginebra’s paltry performance in this excruciating defeat was reminiscent of their lowly output in their first loss to TNT in the eliminations. In their first meeting last September 12, the Gin Kings only shot 36% from the field and committed 21 miscues that led to 27 points from turnovers for the Tropang Giga. Last night, they shot a poor 30% overall clip, and turned the ball over 20 times, leading to 26 turnover points for TNT. With an uncoordinated play on both offense and defense, Ginebra stood no chance against TNT, and found themselves booted out after the first round of the playoffs.
Oftana makes headlines again
The NLEX Road Warriors staved off elimination by hacking out an 81-80 win over the Meralco Bolts.
Main Takeaways:
- His game-winning layup made the headlines again, but Calvin Oftana was also the most complete player for NLEX on both ends of the floor last night. He finished with 12 points on a 5-of-14 shooting, then stuffed the rest of his stat sheet with nine rebounds, five assists, two steals, and a block. His recent 34-point outburst certainly did wonders to his confidence, so look for Oftana to regularly assume a big role on NLEX’s offense from this point forward.
- It was indeed a good result for the Road Warriors, but they can’t afford another quiet and inefficient outing from lead guard Kevin Alas. Alas only had two assists, committed five turnovers, and missed all of his five attempts from beyond the arc. The best version of Alas is when he’s on-point both as a scorer and as a playmaker, and he had tons of games in this conference in which he displayed that unique blend of abilities. But if he can’t be both, NLEX needs him to at least be good at one — whether that be scoring or creating opportunities for his teammates.
Advanced Stats are now available for Philippine basketball! Through Ryan Alba’s ‘Stats by Ryan’, you can now look at team and player advanced stats for the current 2021 PBA Philippine Cup (and the previous three seasons) via the Dribble Media website.
Check out this glossary for a list of the basketball advanced stats terminologies.
You can also contact Ryan via his Twitter handle (@_alba__).
