Tanduay Alab Pilipinas avenged their home loss to the Singapore Slingers, hammering their opponents in overtime to take an 89-80 win, Sunday evening at the OCBC Arena in Singapore.
This is Alab’s third straight win to lift their slate to an even 3-3 while dropping Singapore to a 3-5 record.
During their last encounter in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, the Slingers embarassed the Philippine-based squad, 97-83. Ivan Johnson and Reggie Okosa were Alab’s imports back then. This time around, Justin Brownlee and Renaldo Balkman are the team’s reinforcements.
And the two proved pivotal in the contest.
Balkman played 40 minutes in the contest, finishing with 26 points, eight rebounds, four steals and two blocks while Brownlee had 17 points, eight assists, seven rebounds, two blocks, and two steals in 41 minutes of game time.
In overtime, Brownlee opened up the scoring with four straight points. Balkman followed it up with a lay-up to extend Alab’s lead to six. Alab skipper Bobby Ray Parks Jr. put the nail in the coffin with a three-point play with 1:13 left.
The Slingers simply ran out of gas in extra time as they could only score their only field goal in overtime with 44 ticks — a layup by Filipino-Canadian AJ Mandani.
Parks scored five of his 11 points in overtime. Filipino-American Lawrence Domingo and Pamboy Raymundo led the team’s bench with nine and eight points respectively with the latter going 4-for-4 from the field.
Alab almost had the game in the bag after Robby Celiz broke a 75-75 deadlock with a triple with 51 seconds remaining in regulation. Mandani though was clutch, knocking down a triple of his own 42 seconds later that sent the game into overtime.
Mandani had 13 points off the bench for Singapore, spiked by three triples.
The Slingers were led by two-time World Import MVP Chris Charles with 22 points, 11 rebounds, and four swats. Singaporean Han Bin Ng chipped in 15 markers.
Alab will host the Slingers on Wednesday, January 10 at the Filoil Flying V Centre in San Juan City.
The Scores:
Tanduay Alab 89 – Balkman 26, Brownlee 17, Parks Jr. 11, Domingo 9, Urbiztondo 8, Raymundo 8, Celiz 3, Hontiveros 3, Sumalinog 2, Maierhofer 2, Alabanza 0.
Singapore 80 – Charles 22, Ng 15, Mandani 13, Alexander 10, Low 10, Goh 9, Liew 1, Oh 0, Kwek 0.
Quarterscores: 21-17, 36-36, 73-70, 98-98, 89-80.
