RP Youth five gets back at China, finishes third

DEFENSE and the hot shooting of Ryan Garcia enabled the RP Youth Team to get back at China yesterday 84-80 and finish third in the Manila Youth Basketball Invitational Championship at the Astrodome.

Lithuania and Chinese-Taipei were battling for the title at press time.

The Chinese, who beat the Filipinos 84-56 in the preliminaries, made huge runs in the third period to take the lead going into the final quarter but the Filipinos tightened their defense while Garcia waxed hot to pull off the win.

"In the first half we were just going through the motions. I told the boys to limit China's fastbreaks. I said that if they're going to beat us, they would beat us in half court not, but not with their running game. We were able to limit their fastbreaks and we executed well in the fourth quarter," said coach Franz Pumaren.

Garcia had four triples, three of them in the fourth quarter, to finish with 20 points on top of six rebounds, four assists and three steals.

Fil-Canadian Matthew Wright had 18 points, eight assists and five steals, Jaypee Mendoza added 14 points and seven rebounds while Norberto Torres and Frank Golia combined for 23 points and 12 boards.