Jericho Cruz equaled his career-best playoff performance to steer San Miguel past Magnolia, 108-98, and retake the lead at 3-2 in the 2023-24‘ PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals series on Sunday, Feb. 11, at the Smart Araneta Coliseum. 

The Beermen, who were drew first blood with a 2-0 lead, found their winning touch to snap the Hotshots’ back-to-back counter-attack.  

Cruz caught fire from deep to carry out the fight for San Miguel after scoring 24 of his 30 points off three-pointers that went with eight rebounds, four assists and four steals to get the Beermen out of their series slump. 

Four other Beermen breached the double-digit mark with Bennie Boatwright Jr. finishing with 21 points, six rebounds and four assists on the team’s balanced attack.

June Mar Fajardo, who was enduring a minor injury in San Miguel’s Game 4 defeat, played like there wasn’t even pain to begin with and came up huge on both ends with a double-double outing of 18 points and 15 rebounds. 

Simon Enciso, who barely saw action in the last four games of the series, led all scorers in the first half with 12 points to eventually finished with 18 markers of his own. Celedonio Trollano added 10 points. 

Trailing by nine with under four minutes left in the game, the Hotshots seemed poised to catch the Beermen off guard with a 6-0 counter-attack that cut the deficit to a manageable 99-96. 

However, Cruz doused Magnolia’s newlyfound hope with his final three-pointer of the match to give San Miguel a 102-96 advantage with less than a minute to spare.

Though Tyler Bey was sent to the line and made two of his freebies, CJ Perez and Chris Ross took turns with last-second drives to the basket that sealed the win for the Beermen. 

Bey led all scorers at the final buzzer with 34 points on an equally sensational 5-of07 shooting from the outside.