MANILA – TNT KaTropa abandoned its plan to protest its 110-121 loss to San Miguel Beermen in Game 1 of their 2018 PBA Commissioner’s Cup best-of-three quarterfinals series Monday night at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
KaTropa team manager Virgil Villavicencio said they will shift their focus to preparing for Game 2 on Wednesday night.
“We will not push through with the plan to put our Game 1 loss under protest,” Villavicencio said in a statement late Monday night. “We will just focus on tying the series on Wednesday.”
Villavicencio earlier wrote the words “under protest” on the score sheet showing the KaTropa-Beermen Game 1 scores.
While Villavicencio refused to reveal the reason for the supposed protest, KaTropa head coach Nash Racela hinted that it was about the officiating.
Racela expressed displeasure on how referees Jimmy Mariano, Sherwin Pineda, Emy Tangkion, and Jerry Narandan handled the game that saw Beermen go 31-of-40 from the free-throw line compared to KaTropa’s 8-of-18 clip.
“Tanungin niyo ang referees kung bakit ganoon mga tawag nila,” Racela told the press after the game.
He also felt the referees were too harsh on Joshua Smith. The TNT import left the game with still 3:39 left – and the Beermen slightly ahead 110-106 – after getting tagged with consecutive fouls.
Under PBA rules, for a game protest to be official, the team must submit a formal letter to the PBA Commissioner’s Office before 12 noon the next day and pay a P20,000 fee./PN
