Despite trailing the semifinals series, 2-1, against the talented San Miguel Beer, there were no signs of getting discouraged in the voice of Meralco head coach Norman Black when he talked to the members of the press after their 96-91 defeat in Game 3.
In fact, Black remains confident that they can still compete against the Beermen if they can just shoot the ball well and play scrappy basketball.
“I really believe we can compete with anybody including San Miguel, like I said I thought they got a lot of foul shots in the second half and made the difference in their game. We just have to keep scraping. That's all we can do at this point,” said Black.
“We just don’t have the size to really match up with them so we really have to shoot the basketball well and we have to be out there scrappy,” he added
The veteran mentor also admitted that it was hard to keep up with the Beermen who are bannered by Best Player of the Conference frontrunners June Mar Fajardo and CJ Perez.
“We play physical, play scrappy and try to control the boards and try to control June Mar because he’s really that axis that the San Miguel is rotating around,” said Black of the six-time MVP.
“We can’t allow Perez to get away tonight like he got away in Game 1. We’re able to control them in Game 2 but he got away tonight right from the start of the game so we have to do a better job on him,” he added.
The series however was far from over according to Black as his Bolts try to level the series in Game 4 and keep on track for their bid for their first all-Filipino Cup finals.
“We don’t have any injuries so we’ll be back. It’s not over yet. It’s a best-of-seven series so as long as we don’t have any injuries to our key players we’ll be back and we’re ready to play in Game 4.”