MANILA – San Miguel Beermen stormed back from 23 points down to score a 121-110 victory over TNT KaTropa in Game 1 of their 2018 PBA Commissioner’s Cup best-of-three quarterfinals Monday night at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
Renaldo Balkman led Beermen with double-double 36 points and 16 rebounds. June Mar Fajardo added 27 points and 13 rebounds while Marcio Lassiter contributed 26 points.
The defending champion can move to the best-of-five semifinals – and face the winner of the Alaska Aces-Magnolia Hotshots quarterfinal series – if it defeats KaTropa again in Game 2 on Wednesday.
In the succeeding game, Justin Brownlee caught fire in the second half as Barangay Ginebra San Miguel Kings moved closer to a semifinal seat after an 88-81 come-from-behind win over Meralco Bolts.
After being down by as much as 23 points in the first half, Beermen slowly clawed its way back on outside shots by Lassiter and inside hits by Fajardo and Balkman to come to within 86-88 heading into the fourth quarter.
Both teams were still trading baskets in the fourth period with the scores tied at 106-all until Beermen unloaded a 13-0 scoring run behind Balkman to pull away 119-106 with under a minute left.
Joshua Smith and Roger Pogoy finished with 17 points apiece while Kelly Williams added 16 markers for KaTropa, which put the game under protest due to a number of “questionable calls” by the referees.
Trailing by as much as 10 points in the first half, Ginebra slowly rose in the third period behind Brownlee, Japeth Aguilar and Joe Devance and took a 71-62 lead on baskets from Jeffrei Chan.
Bolts answered with triples from Baser Amer to come to within 76-77 with over five minutes left. But a triple by Kevin Ferrer followed by 5 straight points from Brownlee raised Kings’ lead to 87-79 with 25 seconds left.
Brownlee finished with 25 points and nine rebounds while Devance and Gregory Slaughter added 14 and 13 points, respectively, for Kings. Amer, meanwhile, led Bolts with 15 points./PN
