BY NOLI CORTEZ
CYRUS Baguio showed up anew and Red Bull regained its fiery
touch to beat Alaska 125-104 last night and finish third in the Smart PBA
Philippine Cup at the Araneta Coliseum.
After virtually disappearing in the last game of the
semifinals against Purefoods, Baguio scattered a team-high 23 points, the bulk
coming when the Bulls surged to a big early lead before Mike Hrabak and Carlo
Sharma took over.
Sharma chipped in a career-high 21 points and Hrabak added
17–anchored on 4-of-4 three-point shooting–to go with eight rebounds as Red Bull
maintained 20-point leads and never allowed Alaska to come no closer than seven
points in the second half.
It was the second straight third place finish for the Bulls,
acting as a salve of sorts for coach Yeng Guiao.
"We’re disappointed that we’re not playing in the finals, but
the best consolation is this third place," said Guiao.
"I felt this was a good conference for us. A lot of people
didn’t expect us to get this far. I’d like to take some consolation in the fact
we probably overachieved a little bit," he added.
"But we also felt we really had a good chance to make the
finals, so that kind of dampens the celebrations, probably."
Tony dela Cruz poured in a second career-high 31 points, but
his best scoring game in an Alaska uniform went for naught in the face of Red
Bull’s mighty surge.
The loss kept the Aces’ third place trophies at 12, still two
behind San Miguel Beer’s league-most record.
Like Guiao, Alaska coach Tim Cone must be looking forward to
the import-laced Fiesta Cup tentatively set to start on the last week of March.
The former already is.
"Maraming puwedeng ikasaya ang mga fans and Red Bull itself.
We’re now looking at the future," Guiao said.
"With all the positive things that happened, we’re really
excited to start the next conference as soon as possible."
The Bulls take a two-week break before resuming practice, the
identity of their reinforcement to be known from team consultant Andy Jao, who
is currently scouting for an import in the US.
No team has won back-to-back third place trophies since Talk
N Text did so back in the 2003 and ’04 seasons.
And the Bulls left little doubt they are determined to snare
the best-tasting crumbs of the tournament en route to improving their
conference-high total output by two points.
The Aces got buried for good in the second quarter when they
scored only eight field goals and consequently got outscored 19-31.
Baguio, who scored only seven points in Game 7 of Red Bull’s semifinal series
against Purefoods, scored eight points in each of the first two quarters and was
mainly responsible for putting his team up front 63-49.
