Barangay Ginebra head coach Tim Cone was not all too worried about the relatively quiet night from Christian Standhardinger in their Game 1 win over Meralco in the semifinals last Friday, May 17.

Standhardinger only put up 14 points, far from his 21 points average, on a 6-of-16 clip from the field although he had seven rebounds and seven assists to his name to help his team draw first blood with a 92-88 win.

“The good thing about Christian is he always shows up. If he’s not scoring big he’s doing everything else and he was on the rebounds tonight,” said Cone who credited the defense of Meralco which rotated three big men in putting a body on the 6-foot-8 bruising center.

“I think they really did a good job and I think this is what we're gonna see throughout the series. They rotated three guys on him and tried to wear him down and put a body on him,” he added.

In Game 1, Raymond Almazan, Norbert Torres and rookie Brandon Bates took turns in taking the defensive assignment against Standhardinger. 

With Cone expecting Meralco to do the same in the upcoming games, the veteran tactician stressed the importance of other players stepping up and make the Bolts to continue pick their poison

“We talked about it as a group that this is going to happen. They’re going to try to wear Chris down and other people are going to start  to pick up. That's what Stanley (Pringle) is talking about earlier. Pick your poison,” he added.

While Standhardinger was limited way below his average, guys like Pringle, who led the way with 22 points, Japeth Aguilar and Ralph Cu took the scoring cudgels and did most of the damage for Ginebra.

Aguilar had 17 points while Cu fired away 18 on six triples. 

“You can never expect a player to come out and match his numbers every night and once he does that, teams will take it away. Now, you have to find alternatives and now they're gonna have to go out and look at what we're going to do,” he pointed out.