B-Meg levels series with Talk ‘N Text

B-Meg levels series with Talk ‘N Text

 by rick olivares with pic by tunying p.

The B-Meg Derby Ace Llamados continued their remarkable recovery for an early season slide to tie up favored Talk ‘N Text 2-2 in their semifinals series for the Philippine Cup with a 98-93 win at the Araneta Coliseum last night.

Two-time MVP James Yap scored 26 points on 10-20 field goal shooting to pace his team but it was four tip ins that did the Tropang Texters in.

After going down by 21 points in the third quarter, it was a smaller lineup – Larry Fonacier, Jason Castro, Ryan Williams, Rich Alvarez, and Williams -- by Talk ‘N Text that got them back in the game. After Fonacier dropped a trey at the 3:50 mark of the 4^th period to make it 86-83 B-Meg, four tip ins by Rico Maierhofer and Marc Pingris killed any hope of the Manny Pangilinan franchise of going up 3-1 in the series.

Maierhofer scored six of his 10 points in that span.

In the face of the searing rally by the Tropang Texters, Yap scored on a huge three-point play off Kelly Williams to make it 84-78 for B-Meg that somewhat blunted the attack.  After Fonacier’s triple, Yap answer with another basket.

“Sa team namin kailangan lahat mag-step up,” said Yap. “Gumawa man ako ng maraming puntos kung talo naman bale wala rin.”

“That was too big a lead for us to overcome,” said Talk ‘n Text Mentor Chot Reyes. “But I am proud of the way we came back. Now it’s a best-of-three series.”

“B-Meg is a very talented team,” added Reyes. “If you want to beat them then you need your entire team to show up. I have always said that they have the best guards corps in the league and our guards have their hands full with them. That means our bigs must dominate their bigs. We didn’t get the job done.”

Jimmy Alapag led his team with 22 points while Ali Peek added 17 points and 10 rebounds but he was shut down in the final period. Larry Fonacier, who has finally come alive in the series scored 15, while Jason Castro and Reyes each had 11.

B-Meg is trying to become the first team since the Great Taste Coffeemakers of 1984-85  to win back-to-back All-Filipino Conference titles.