Winner-take-all Game 3 tonight

The champion of the Budweiser-Coca Cola 6th Annual UFO Inter-Organizational Basketball League would be crowned when SIP-Flor A. Miranda and Cabalen-RP Construction/Transamerica collide for the winner-take-all final game of their best-of-three series tonight at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium.

Both teams are leveled at one game apiece, with SIP taking Game 1 last March 5, 88-79, and Cabalen avenging that loss with a 99-85 victory in Game 2 last March 12.

Cabalen playing-coach Elmer Pineda said his boys must maintain the focus they showed in the last 10 minutes of the previous game if they expect to go all the way tonight, while his SIP counterpart, Rufino Aguon, said SIP players must show him in Game 3 if they “really want to win the championship or are just content in finishing second.”

Pineda, who is sidelined since Game 1 because of a head injury, acknowledged his players’ success in solving SIP’s vaunted trapping defense but cautioned Cabalen from being too overly confident, as he expects a fired up SIP team to “give it their all” tonight.

Speaking in his native Filpino, the Hotel Nikko Saipan employee admitted he was frustrated in the third quarter of Game 2 when his team allowed SIP to claw back from 11 points down.

He admitted that if he hadn’t scolded them and challenged their basketball IQ, SIP would have hoisted the trophy at the end of that game.

“I told them ‘you don’t know how to play basketball. Trapping is only basic basketball’ and to their credit they responded well,” Pineda said in Tagalog.

Aguon, for his part, said his team will try to make adjustments and build on what they were able to achieve in the third quarter of Game 2 and won’t dwell on their collapse in the payoff period, which saw big man Edsel Mendoza and spiritual leader Rick Alegre hit the showers on account of five fouls.

“We have made adjustments and hope they will be enough. They are a good team so we cannot take them for granted,” he said. “It was pretty obvious that Cabalen wanted it more than us in Game 2, we were a step behind them most of the time. Hope it would change this next game.”

Like what he said before the start of the series, the concurrent CNMI Men’s National Basketball Team coach believes the key for Game 3 is Cabalen players’ ability to feed their big men, where they have an almost absolute advantage.

Behemoth Dalewin Cortez finished with 25 points and forwards Ronald Delos Reyes and Eric Dalangin chipped in 18 points apiece in Cabalen’s Game 3 breakthough.

“In the last game they were able to get the ball to their big men down in the low key area where they did most of the damage. They also made their free throws down the stretch, which was the difference. Our goal tonight is to prevent that from happening again and of course, as always, play harder,” he said.

Game 3 will be played starting at 7pm tonight at the Oleai Sports Complex basketball venue and like the previous two matches, UFO would be charging a $1 entrance fee for relief efforts to victims of the recent landslide in St. Bernard, Leyte.